Two Koreas clash at UN over nuclear weapons, drills with U.S.

WASHINGTON — North Korea on Friday accused South Korea at the United Nations of seeking nuclear weapons and called Seoul’s joint military drills with Washington “a blatant nuclear war rehearsal” against the North. South Korea hit back with an unplanned rebuttal, calling the North’s claims groundless.

The remarks came as tensions rise along the military demarcation line (MDL) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s surprise visit to China renews attention on a possible U.S.-North Korea summit.

“Does it intend to develop its own nuclear weapons, or to attack North Korea with U.S. nuclear weapons?” an official from North Korea’s mission to the UN said at the 20th meeting of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee in New York, referring to South Korea. 

He went on to call South Korea-U.S. combined exercises held in August “a blatant nuclear war rehearsal to master the procedures and methods of attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons.”

“South Korea stages nuclear war exercises targeting North Korea together with the United States every year while openly talking about response measures against North Korea,” the official claimed.

He also asserted that North Korea is a nuclear-armed state. “What response measures does it intend to take against a nuclear weapons state?” the official said. “It is South Korea, not North Korea, that is provocative. We strongly recommend that South Korea find ways and means to guarantee its own security rather than provoking us.”

The North further ruled out inter-Korean dialogue, saying it has “no intention or reason to do anything with South Korea.”

The South Korean representative responded with an unplanned rebuttal. “We had no plans to speak today, but the repeated and groundless claims by the North Korean delegation have left us no choice but to exercise our right of reply,” the representative said.

The representative rejected the North’s claim that the drills were nuclear attack training. “The combined defense and deterrence posture of South Korea and the United States is a response to North Korea’s growing military threats, not the other way around,” the representative said. “North Korea continues to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”

The two Koreas have traded accusations at the UN in recent weeks over military tensions and the North’s nuclear weapons development. North Korea earlier labeled South Korea “the most hostile state” and reaffirmed its hard-line stance on inter-Korean relations. South Korea, in turn, criticized the North’s planting of land mines in the demilitarized zone and its nuclear and missile development, and urged Pyongyang to return to dialogue.

Seoul has also stepped up its diplomatic response to a recent North Korean land mine explosion. On Thursday, it sent a letter to the president of the UN Security Council raising the explosion as a violation of the 1950-53 Korean War Armistice Agreement.

BY KANG TAE-HWA [[email protected]]