Pyongyang, June 26 (KCNA) -- A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea released the following statement on Wednesday:

We now see an unusual move of the United States whereby it gets ever more undisguised in its hostility towards us.

Recently, the U.S. viciously slandered the DPRK in its "Trafficking in Persons Report" and "International Religious Freedom Report", both of which are based on all kinds of falsehoods and fabrications, and it also decided to continue for another one year the "National Emergency" that calls for defining us as its enemy and imposing further sanctions.

The U.S. State Secretary Pompeo especially made reckless remarks when asked in a press conference about a possibility of the DPRK-U.S. working-level talks that it is important for everyone to remember that today some 80-plus percent of the North Korean economy is sanctioned, and he let loose a sophistry as if the sanctions are rendering the bilateral talks possible.

If the U.S. sanctions are affecting 80-plus percent of our economy, as Pompeo mentioned, the question is whether the U.S. target is to raise it up to 100 percent.

This is an outright challenge to the DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement adopted at the DPRK-U.S. summit talks held in Singapore and a manifestation of the most extreme hostile acts by the United States towards the DPRK.

All these speak clearly to the fact that the wild dream of the U.S. to bring us to our knees by means of sanctions and pressure has not changed at all but grows even more undisguised.

As for the "National Emergency" strongly advocated by the U.S., it is nothing less than the product of the heinous policy hostile to us, because it was designed to persist with the anti-DPRK sanctions by continuously terming us as an enemy when the U.S. administration had to remove us from the targets of the "Trading With The Enemy Act" in June 2008.

Even though the supreme leaders devote their all for establishing new DPRK-U.S. relations, it would be difficult to look forward to the improvement of the bilateral relations and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula as long as the American politics are dominated by the policy-makers who have an inveterate antagonism towards the DPRK.

The United States should not be mistaken.

As Comrade Chairman of the State Affairs Commission said, we would not thirst for a lifting of sanctions.

Our state is not a country that will surrender to the U.S. sanctions, nor are we a country which the U.S. could attack whenever it desires to do so.

If anyone dares to trample over our sovereignty and the right to existence, we will not hesitate to pull a muscle-flexing trigger in order to defend ourselves. -0-