North voices 'strong regret' over UN chief's criticism of recent missile launches: state media

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during his meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in Seoul on Aug. 12. [YONHAP]

North Korea on Tuesday voiced "strong regret" that the head of the United Nations has denounced Pyongyang's recent barrage of missiles, according to its state media.

Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement "strongly" condemning the North's missile launches, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and urged the reclusive country to immediately cease provocations.

"I express strong regret at the fact that the UN secretary general issued a statement on Nov. 4 groundlessly pulling up the DPRK over its just counteraction for self-defense to cope with the U.S. military provocations, and categorically reject it," Kim Son-gyong, vice minister for International Organizations of Foreign Affairs, said in an English-language statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Kim defended the North's recent "military drills" as a "due reaction to the largest-ever combined air drill staged by the U.S. and South Korea."

On Saturday, the allies wrapped up their Vigilant Storm exercise involving hundreds of military aircraft, including stealth fighter jets and two B-1B supersonic bombers. The North earlier said it conducted four days of "military operations" in response to the allies' drills.

"This being a hard fact, the UN secretary general is echoing what the White House and the State Department say as if he were their mouthpiece, which is deplorable," Kim said.

"If the war drills being staged in a frantic manner by openly introducing an aircraft carrier and strategic bombers against the sovereign state are described as 'defensive' and the exercise of the just right to self-defense to cope with them is branded as 'provocation,' the UN, whose most important mission is to maintain global peace and security, will lose its justification for existence," he added.

North Korea launched more than 30 ballistic missiles last week alone, including an ICBM that was presumed to have ended in failure, amid growing speculation it may carry out a nuclear test in the near future.

Yonhap