Pyongyang squawks at goings-on at NATO summit

North Korea's Foreign Ministry condemned South Korea, the United States and Japan for efforts to strengthen security cooperation in a trilateral summit in Madrid and accused Washington of creating a NATO-like military alliance in the Asia-Pacific.

President Yoon Suk-yeol, right, shakes hands with U.S. President Joe Biden ahead of a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of a NATO gathering at the IFEMA Convention Center in Madrid Wednesday afternoon. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

North Korea's Foreign Ministry condemned South Korea, the United States and Japan for efforts to strengthen security cooperation in a trilateral summit in Madrid last week and accused Washington of creating a NATO-like military alliance in the Asia-Pacific.

The ministry's spokesperson said, according to an English-language report from the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Sunday, "During the recent NATO summit, the chief executives of the U.S., Japan and south Korea put their heads together for confrontation with the DPRK and discussed the dangerous joint military countermeasures against it including the launch of tripartite joint military exercises."

DPRK is the acronym for the North's full name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

On Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden met on the sidelines of a NATO Summit in Madrid, holding their first trilateral talks in nearly five years.

The KCNA report said that the United States "and its vassal forces," referring to its allies, tried to find "fault with the DPRK's measure for bolstering its military capability for self-defense in a 'new strategic concept' adopted at the NATO summit."

The spokesperson said the NATO summit last week "clearly proves that the U.S. pursues a plan to contain Russia and China" while "realizing the 'militarization' of Europe and forming a military alliance like NATO in the Asia-Pacific region."

The U.S.-Japan-South Korea military alliance is "an important means for materializing the plan," added the spokesperson.

The North's Foreign Ministry claimed that U.S.-led joint military exercises and navel drills in the region "destroy peace and stability" on the Korean Peninsula as well as in the Asia-Pacific region.

It added that a "dangerous situation" has been created in which "a nuclear war might break out simultaneously in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region" and "the world peace and security came to be placed in the most critical condition after the end of the Cold War."

NATO invited for the first time four Asia-Pacific countries — South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand — to attend the summit held last Wednesday and Thursday.

The 30 NATO leaders during the summit adopted a new strategic concept meant as a blueprint for the military alliance's priorities for the next 10 years, which targets rising threats from Russia and China, traditional allies of North Korea.

The strategic concept states that Russia poses "the most significant and direct threat" to the alliance's security and says that China's "coercive policies" challenge its "interests, security and values." It mentions North Korea as a country that continues to develop nuclear and missile programs and has resorted to the use of chemical weapons, noting that the use of such weapons or materials "by hostile state and non-state actors" remain a threat to NATO's security.

The United States is reviewing "expanding sanctions on North Korean individual and entities," said a South Korean presidential official after the trilateral talks in Madrid Wednesday.

On Saturday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a separate statement vowing to strengthen its "self-defense" measures against threats from the United States in response to the Group of Seven, or G7 meeting held in Germany ahead of the NATO gathering.

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]