November 4, 2024
Main statement:
Mr. President,
We welcome the participation in this meeting of the Permanent Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
We have closely listened to the briefing by Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Hiyari. We are compelled to note that once again it has not provided any substantive evaluation of what is happening.
In Korean affairs, the collective West has been methodically using the Security Council platform to present Pyongyang as the sole actor responsible for the degradation of the situation on the peninsula. The UN Secretariat has also played its role in creating such a distorted image by ignoring the external context of events. Even in the current, so acute phase of the developments on the Korean Peninsula, the UN officials prefer to repeat the same arguments criticizing Pyongyang while turning a blind eye to provocations by its opponents. Thus, they become complicit in this negative turn of events.
We didn’t expect to hear (and didn’t hear indeed) anything new from the group of countries that convened today’s meeting. Every time, the purpose of convening such meetings is the same – to take yet another step towards greater vilification of the DPRK. We would like to ask those who requested the briefing, whether any of these meetings has had any contribution so far to addressing the peninsula’s problems. Have they voiced during that period at least one constructive proposal aimed at creating conditions for launching dialogue there? The answer is obvious to everyone in this chamber. Creating negative buzz around Pyongyang, keeping the ineffective sanctions measures afloat, justifying aggressive steps by the United States and its allies in the region – these are the true motives of those who requested today’s meeting. I would just like to remind you that these goals have nothing to do with the mandate of the Security Council. On the contrary, through such actions our colleagues are only directly undermining the work of the Security Council, which, according to the UN Charter, is designated to maintain international peace and security. Washington and other parties concerned could just as successfully continue their propaganda through the media outlets and NGOs that they control.
Madam President,
The missile tests that have sent shockwaves to Washington, Tokyo and Seoul are not starting out of thin air, nor happenning in a notorious “vacuum”. They cannot be viewed separately from the aggressive plans of the Americans and their satellites in the region. Namely, I’m referring to large-scale military maneuvers accompanied by the deployment of US strategic capabilities, to joint nuclear planning by the US and the Republic of Korea with the simulation of nuclear strikes on the territory of the DPRK, as well as to the shaping of the Washington-Seoul-Tokyo military-political “triangle”.
Let’s look at the actions of the USA and its allies in Northeast Asia over just a few past weeks. On October 28, the United States, Australia and the Republic of Korea began the unprecedentedly large-scale joint air exercises called “Freedom Flag”. These maneuvers involve hundreds of aircraft, ground forces, marines and special forces. Simultaneously, the Republic of Korea continues its largest “Hoguk” exercise involving its national armed forces and American military units. Dangerous provocations with the use of military drones are ongoing from the south in the direction of the DPRK; thus, there have been carried out more than 230 sorties into North Korean airspace over the past three months, which grossly violates the country’s sovereignty.
These aggressive measures are being taken to complement the already regular “Freedom Shield” and “Freedom Edge” exercises. It is worth recalling that within these maneuvers, scenarios of a hypothetical armed conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons and the physical elimination of the North Korean leadership have been consistently rehearsed.
Apart from military campaigns, Pyongyang’s adversaries continue to exert all kinds of political and economic pressure on it, which is in violation of the UN Charter. For years, unlawful Western unilateral sanctions have directly negatively impacted the lives of ordinary people. The Council’s restraints are frozen in time and do not reflect the peninsula’s problems. All proposals by Russia and China to update the Security Council measures have been rejected and are likely to be rejected further on, since they do not correspond to the US interests aimed at steadily strangling Pyongyang.
We regret that our longstanding friends and partners in Seoul are rapidly losing their independence under pressure from Washington, thus jeopardizing their own national interests. It appears that they have also get dragged into Washington’s dangerous adventures to increase the supply of Western arms to Ukraine, which Kiev desperately needs due to the huge losses in the battle field. It is telling that it is specifically the Ukrainian issue that became one of the main topics addressed during the “Camp David” format consultations of national security advisers of the United States, Japan and South Korea that took place on October 25. It seems that by pursuing their aggressive policy on the Korean peninsula, the Americans are at the same time trying to achieve their goal to mobilize its allies against Russia. This says a great deal about America’s true motives vis-a-vis the subregion. We urge our South Korean colleagues to come to their senses and not to embark on an extremely dangerous path that will lead Seoul to no good. All the more so since, according to South Korean surveys, the clear majority of the country’s population does not support sending arms to Ukraine.
Madam President,
The policy of creating a sort of “managed tension” on the Korean peninsula is presented by the authorities in Washington as routine measures to ensure the security of the United States and its allies. However, the US authorities do not want to acknowledge the simple truth that the security of one state cannot be ensured at the expense of the security of another one. Neither in Europe nor in Asia.
The DPRK leadership has every right to apply measures to ensure the security and sovereignty of their country. The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty between our countries of June 19 is designed to play a stabilizing role in the region based on the principle of indivisibility of security, as well as to lower the risk of the peninsula’s relapsing into war, including with the use of nuclear weapons. Thus, this treaty is to become one of the elements in a resilient security architecture in the region. The provisions of the Treaty, including Article 4 on mutual assistance in the event of an armed attack, will be fully implemented if necessary. The Treaty is consistent with the UN Charter, and the measures that can be taken to implement it are a matter for Russian-DPRK bilateral relations.
Nor do we intend to support unbalanced initiatives in the UN Security Council premised on the condemnation of the DPRK or laying on it all the blame for exacerbating the crisis on the peninsula.
Madam President,
It’s hardly surprising that some UNSC members have again repeated today their speculations about the dispatch of some North Korean military units to Russia. And in reports of some media controlled by the West, the numbers of DPRK personnel present in Russia are rising day by day, apparently the figures are rising as quickly as the fear and anxiety in their countries do.
The UN Secretary-General also made a misleading statement about these reports. It’s quite surprising that while he is playing along with the West in internationalizing the Ukrainian conflict, he has never voiced the same level of concern about the ever growing arsenal of increasingly long-range Western weapons for Ukraine, about the debates whether it is possible to strike deep into Russian territory, not to mention the practice of sending military personnel of NATO countries into the conflict zone in Ukraine. And this is despite the fact that it is well known that there are hundreds, if not thousands of NATO soldiers there, not mercenaries, but instructors and officers responsible for the use of precision weaponry or armed drones in the Black Sea. Or: has anyone seen any UNSG’s statements expressing concern over supplies of American weapons to the area of Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Western countries are repeating their arguments saying thet “that’s a different thing”. However, do they realize that these glaring double standards and such a brazen demonstration of exceptionalism and high-handedness are clearly visible to the entire international community?
Returning to the situation on the Korean peninsula, we would like to reiterate once again that the Security Council should fundamentally revise its approaches in order to get the situation out of this dangerous stalemate and not make it even worse. We have said on numerous occasions from where we could begin our movement towards normalization. But for that to happen, Western capitals need to radically recalibrate their thinking, which in intellectual terms is stuck somewhere in the Cold War era. This is evidenced, in particular, by the attempts of a narrow group of countries to breathe some life into the so-called “unified command,” which originally was a stillborn relic of a bygone era. Similarly, there are all sorts of Western-centric “gatherings” and “groupings”, which entrust themselves with regulatory and supervisory functions, including to the detriment of the prerogatives of the UN Security Council entrusted to it by the Charter. All of this is a manifestation of the chronic flaws of the West’s colonial policy in Asia, which it will have to abandon.
Thank you for your attention.
First Reply:
I would like to respond briefly to the remarks by the US representative and urge him to listen carefully to our statements in the Security Council.
Today we presented our evaluations of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, explained how we view today’s briefing, and also we answered questions regarding Russia-DPRK cooperation. We expressed our concerns over the situation on the Korean Peninsula and pointed out that the USA and the countries supporting you are the main source of this tension. And it is these countries that are fueling the escalation and pushing the developments to a very dangerous threshold. In order to make our arguments clearer to the US representative, I will send our statement to him personally as soon as it is translated into English.
Thank you.
Second reply:
We are not in court, and I’m not going to answer the US questions asked in an interrogation-like manner.
Thank you.