UN Security Council members issue join statement blasting North Korea

Ten members of the UN Security Council, including the United States and South Korea, condemned “in the strongest terms” the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile launch in a joint statement Tuesday...

Robert Wood, alternative permanent representative of the United States to the UN, center, speaks with the press with nine other members of the council, including South Korean Ambassador to the UN Hwang Joon-kook, left from center, to condemn North Korea's recent intercontinental ballistic missile launch after the council meeting in New York on Tuesday. [SCREEN CAPTURE OF UN WEB TV]

Ten members of the UN Security Council, including the United States and South Korea, condemned “in the strongest terms” the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile launch in a joint statement Tuesday.

“Over 30 times the DPRK has violated multiple Security Council resolutions, seeking to undermine the Security Council’s credibility, and over 30 times the DPRK has threatened the global nonproliferation regime,” said Robert Wood, alternative permanent representative of the United States to the UN, speaking with the press after the council meeting in New York on Tuesday.

He was referring to the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch earlier this week and the other dozens of ballistic missile launches and satellite launches using ballistic missile technology this year.

The DPRK is the acronym of the North’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the DPRK’s Dec. 17 ICBM launch and those before it because we cannot become inured to this behavior,” he said, reading a joint statement issued by 10 members of the council, including Ecuador, France, Japan and Britain. “Council silence sends the wrong message to Pyongyang and all proliferators.”

Permanent members China and Russia, which have veto powers, did not join the statement.

Representatives of the two Koreas exchanged sharp words during the council meeting in New York earlier on Tuesday.

“I strongly denounce and categorically reject unfair abnormal practice repeated again at the Security Council to deal unjustly with the legitimate exercise of the right to self-defense of DPRK,” said Kim Song, the North’s ambassador to the UN, sticking to the usual North Korean official rhetoric of blaming the United States and South Korea’s military exercises in the region.

“Under the disguise of enhanced regular visibility of the strategic assets, it also pushed nuclear aircraft carrier strike group in succession such as [USS] Nimitz and Ronald Reagan and deployed B-1B and B-52H strategic bombers on more than 20 occasions,” Kim said. “The area of the Korean Peninsula has literally been turned into a general depot of strategic nuclear assets of the United States.”

South Korean Ambassador to the UN Hwang Joon-kook, in turn, asked the North to stop “turning a blind eye to the suffering of its own people” and wasting its “scant resources” on its weapons programs.

He also called on representatives of Russia and China to join the rest of the council members to “condemn the DPRK’s continued provocations” and development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and “reaffirm the goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the DPRK” as agreed in multiple council resolutions.

“This is the absolute minimum; the council must stand united,” Hwang said.

Russia and China vetoed the U.S.-drafted sanctions resolution on the North in May 2022. The council has been imposing sanctions on the regime after its first nuclear weapons test in 2006. The council last adopted sanctions on North Korea in December 2017.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]