Pyongyang slams Foreign Minister Park for comments

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin speaks to reporters at Incheon International Airport before his departure to the United States for diplomatic talks last month. [NEWS1]

North Korea blasted South Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin for remarks in a recent interview with CNN where he said the regime must be pressured to return to talks on its illicit weapons programs.

In an editorial titled “Pitiful sleepwalkers of the 21st century” that was published Thursday, Pyongyang propaganda outlet Uriminzokkiri characterized Park's remarks as “flattering the United States” and saying Washington “is the only one who can protect them.”

In an interview with CNN on Feb. 22, Park said South Korea and the United States “have to create an environment where North Korea has no choice but to come back to the negotiation table.”

The foreign minister also said past experiences taught “that when we are strong, North Korea comes to the dialogue table," but that “when we are weak, they try to take advantage of that vulnerability.”

But Uriminzokkiri said the South Korean foreign minister’s remarks suggested he was “begging for help” from Washington to put pressure on Pyongyang.

The propaganda outlet claimed in its editorial that Park “appeared to have not shaken off his delusional hallucinations despite being painfully proved wrong.”

“The United States and other forces aligned against our republic have applied pressure on us for decades, but it has only reinforced our iron will to become stronger and increase our national power,” the editorial claimed.

The title of the editorial was drawn from the 2014 history book “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” and intended as an analogy to how South Korea and the United States are miscalculating the cost of a potential conflict with North Korea, according to the outlet.

“Just as the sleepwalkers of the 20th century brought down a tremendously catastrophic world war upon all of humanity, these 21st century sleepwalkers will bring about a wrath that will imperil the existence of not only South Korea, but also their own,” the editorial also said.

On Tuesday, the North’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency released a statement by Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un, where she said the regime would regard any move by the United States to intercept the regime’s missiles as “a declaration of war,” highlighting the possibility that Pyongyang could fire missiles into the Pacific Ocean.

Last month, Kim also issued a statement saying that the frequency of North Korean launches into the Pacific will depend on the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]