Pyongyang, March 27 (KCNA) -- Ri Pyong Chol, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), released the following statement on Friday:

The recent testfire of new-type tactical guided missiles was an act tantamount to the exercise of the full-fledged right of a sovereign state for self-defense as it was a process that had been undertaken to implement the goals of the policy on national defence science set forth by our Party and government to boost the defence capabilities of the country.

We cannot but build invincible physical power for reliably defending the security of our state under the present situation in which south Korea and the U.S. constantly pose military threats to the Korean peninsula while persistently conducting dangerous war exercises and introducing advanced weapons.

We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive faulting the regular testfire, exercise of our state's right to self-defence, as the violation of UN "resolutions" and openly revealing his deep-seated hostility toward the DPRK.

Such remarks from the U.S. president are an undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and provocation to it.

It is a gangster-like logic that it is allowable for the U.S. to ship the strategic nuclear assets into the Korean peninsula and launch ICBMs any time it wants but not allowable for the DPRK, its belligerent party, to conduct even a test of a tactical weapon.

We clearly remember that after the appearance of the new administration in Washington there have been exploitation of every opportunity to make words and acts provoking the sovereignty and dignity of our state in which we were branded as the most serious "security threat".

The bellicose stance of the new U.S. administration awakens us to the way to be followed by us and convinces us of the justice of the work to be done by us once again.

We are by no means developing weapons to draw someone's attention or influence his policy.

If the war exercise staged by the U.S. right before its belligerent party across the ocean is for "defence", we are supposed to have the full-fledged right to self-defence to contain the former's military threat on its mainland.

I think that the new U.S. administration obviously took its first step wrong.

If the U.S. continues with its thoughtless remarks without thinking of the consequences, it may be faced with something that is not good.

We know very well what we must do.

We will continue to increase our most thoroughgoing and overwhelming military power. -0-