Kim Son Gyong, Vice-Minister for International Organizations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), issued the following press statement on November 27.

The reason why the UN Security Council (UNSC) fails to fulfill its important mission to ensure global peace and security and get rid of its malfunction can be clearly found in the “joint statement of 10 countries” issued by the U.S. and its followers.

The “joint statement“, signed by some permanent member states of the UNSC gripped by extreme prejudice and double-standards and some UN member states accustomed to blindly following the U.S. instruction instead of considering whether it is right or wrong, is nothing but a scheming document which is neither legally binding, nor has any political influence.

The DPRK’s reconnaissance satellite launch is a legitimate and just exercise of the right to self-defense to get a clear picture of the dire military moves of the U.S. and its followers so that we could be fully prepared for them, with their aggressive nature becoming all the clearer as days go by.

If the reconnaissance satellite “Malligyong-1” launched into the space becomes a “threat” to the signatories of the “joint statement”, are the nuclear carriers, and strategic nuclear submarines and bombers deployed at the doorstep of the DPRK by the U.S. on nearly thirty occasions this year “envoys of friendship and peace”?

Do the “ten countries”, which accused the DPRK of using ballistic missile technology in launching the satellite, launch their satellites into the outer space with balloons or null gravity, not with a carrier rocket using the same technology as ballistic missile?

Such brigandish argument of the U.S. and its vassal forces that the DPRK only is not allowed to exercise its due right to space exploration, a right belonging to all UN member states, is a typical expression of the most hideous and impudent encroachment upon the sovereignty that denies the justification of the existence of the DPRK, before being a simple issue of partiality and double-standards.

Our position is clear.

The U.S. finds its key interest and hobby in encroaching upon the sovereign rights of independent countries with their high-handedness and threat, but what the DPRK is interested in is its full exercise of the universal sovereign rights including satellite launch commonly shared by all countries.

No matter what critical statements they publish and no matter what harshest-ever sanctions they come up with, the U.S. and its following forces will never check the DPRK’s exercise of its sovereign rights nor get whatever they want.

To make it clearly understood that the U.S. and the West’s outrageous and illegal interference in the internal affairs of independent sovereign countries and employment of double-standards against them can never work, the DPRK will squarely, unhesitatingly and fully exercise its sovereign rights including satellite launch, and this will contribute to the establishment of a new just and equitable international order.

If the U.S. and its vassal forces try again to violate the sovereignty of the DPRK under the pretext of the utterly unlawful Security Council “resolutions”, they will be held wholly accountable for any consequences to be entailed by it.