North threatens U.S. to stop further sanctions

The United States will experience the “greatest pain and suffering it has ever gone through in its entire history” if it continues to push for United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea, the regime said on Monday.

“Since the U.S. is revealing its nature as a blood-thirsty beast obsessed with the wild dream of reversing the DPRK’s development of the state nuclear force which has already reached the completion phase,” North Korea’s Foreign Affairs Ministry was reported as having said in an English dispatch of the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “There is no way that the DPRK is going to wait and let the U.S. feast on it.”

DPRK is short for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The statement came a day before the UN Security Council was scheduled to vote on a new resolution aimed at reducing oil exports to North Korea and severing other cash routes linked with the regime’s nuclear and missile development programs.

If passed, the sanctions, chiefly drafted by the United States, will be the toughest yet, in response to Pyongyang’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.

If Washington goes ahead with the vote, North Korea said it will “absolutely” make sure the country “pay due price,” adding it was ready and willing to use “any form of ultimate means” that will force the world to see how it “tames the U.S. gangsters by taking series of action tougher than they have ever envisaged.”

Pyongyang did not mention how it would take revenge on Washington, but Suh Hoon, director for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, might have given some hints last week when he said North Korea seemed to be preparing another missile test, possibly an intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile aimed at a normal angle towards the northern Pacific.

One of the two dates Suh predicted was around Sept. 9, or last Saturday, North Korea’s foundation day. Another date was Oct. 10, the anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party.

Local authorities said they did not spot any new provocations over the past weekend.

The upcoming UN Security Council vote comes shortly after a panel of UN experts said in a report last week that Syria and North Korea were backing each other’s missile development programs, highlighting cooperation in “prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms,” namely Syria’s Scud missile programs and the maintenance and repair of surface-to-air missile air defense systems.

The panel, established pursuant to resolution 1874 (2009), added that numerous UN member states have wittingly and unwittingly provided banking services to front companies and North Korean nationals engaged in prohibited activities.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]