'Clear violation of sovereignty… proves reality of eternal hostility,' Pyongyang says

A North Korean flag flies outside the country's consulate in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China. [Reuters]
A North Korean flag flies outside the country's consulate in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China. [Reuters]

North Korea sharply condemned the joint statement issued after the recent South Korea-EU summit, claiming that South Korea's leader had "thrown off the mask of peace."

The North's Foreign Ministry issued a statement Saturday under the name of its "Department 10 spokesperson," saying that "whatever words or actions the Seoul authorities take, they constitute a challenge to us, and our principle of treating South Korea as a thorough enemy state remains unchanged."

Department 10 is a unit established under the Foreign Ministry after North Korea declared inter-Korean relations to be a relationship between "two hostile states." It handles affairs related to South Korea.

President Lee Jae-myung concluded summit talks with European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on June 10, after which the three sides adopted a joint statement.

The statement condemned "the support of third parties enabling the continuation of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, in particular the support of North Korea," and strongly denounced "the illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea." It also stated that North Korea "will never be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and cannot hold any special status in that regard."

Responding to those passages, the spokesperson said the statement amounted to "a clear violation of our state's sovereignty and a grave act of hostility," adding that it was tantamount to discarding what Pyongyang called the hollow pretense of "respecting our system" and "not pursuing hostile acts." The spokesperson claimed South Korea's leader had "thrown off the cumbersome mask of 'peace' he had been wearing."

The spokesperson went on to say that "South Korea's leader has, through this declaration of confrontation, proven the reality that peaceful coexistence between North and South is impossible and that the two states are destined to remain eternally hostile." The statement added that the leader's display of characteristic "candor" showed he no longer had the standing to stage the charade of a "peace declaration" or a "peaceful two-state theory."

The spokesperson further claimed that "South Korea's true nature and fate is to be America's dagger for invading Korea and the Asian continent — a primary enemy state that cannot exist apart from hostility toward us," and criticized what it called the inevitable outcome of that "dagger" tearing through the "silk wrapping of peace."


balme@heraldcorp.com