A defiant North Korea warned on Wednesday that it would regard harsh sanctions over its nuclear test as a declaration of war and threatened further trials if the United States kept up its pressure on Pyongyang. | “If the US continues to harass and put pressure on us, we will regard this as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical countermeasures...” |
“If the US continues to harass and put pressure on us, we will regard this as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical countermeasures,” said a foreign ministry statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. It did not elaborate on the measures, but insisted it was still ready for talks to improve security and stability on the Korean peninsula. “We are ready for both dialogue and confrontation.”
The message was reinforced by Kim Yong-Nam, who as head of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly is effectively the regime’s number two. “If the US continues to take a hostile attitude and apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that,” he said in an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News. He added: “The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to US policy toward our country.”