UNSC "Resolution on Sanctions" 2321 Rejected

   Pyongyang, December 22 (KCNA) -- The director of the Department of Treaty and Law of the DPRK Foreign Ministry Thursday released a statement in denunciation of the "resolution on sanctions" against the DPRK which was cooked up by the UN Security Council at the instigation of the U.S. and its vassal forces, branding the nuclear warhead explosion test of the DPRK as "threat" and "provocation".

   The statement said that neither sanctions of the UN nor independent sanctions can ever work on the DPRK which has proudly emerged a nuclear power and space power despite the unprecedented sanctions slapped by the U.S. and other hostile forces on it for more than half a century.

   Bitterly denouncing the UNSC "resolution on sanctions" 2321 wantonly violating the sovereignty of the DPRK as a criminal document without any legality, the statement went on:

   The DPRK's nuclear warhead explosion test was the exercise of the right to self-defence and a practical counteraction against the U.S. and other hostile forces' nuclear threat and reckless sanctions and a demonstration of the strongest will of its people who are ready to counter any provocation of the enemy.

   The DPRK's legitimate self-defensive measure to defend its dignity and vital rights and protect genuine peace from the ever-more increasing nuclear war threat from the U.S. is the legal right of a sovereign state which does not run counter to any international law.

   This time the U.S. and other hostile forces cooked up blockade-style "resolution on sanctions" totally blocking sea lane, to say nothing of trade and scientific and technical cooperation, discarding even the hypocritical signboard of excepting economic activities related to the people's life they put up in the past in the wake of adopting the UNSC "resolution on sanctions" 2270 for the purpose of isolating and stifling the DPRK.

   The latest UNSC "resolution on sanctions" has created the danger of imminent war on the Korean peninsula as there are no judicial and institutional mechanisms to avert a war and armed conflicts and the "resolution" is as good as a declaration of war.

   The U.S. and other countries involved in adopting the "resolution on sanctions" will have to be wholly responsible for the ensuing consequences.

Received from the DPRK Embassy