North Korea slams UN Security Council's 'double standards' over missile tests

North Korea has censured the United Nations Security Council for applying “double standards” over military activities of its member states, including the United States and South Korea that frequently hold joint military drills and conduct weapons tests on the Korean Peninsula. 

Upon a request from the United States, the council held an emergency meeting on Friday on Pyongyang’s recent missile tests but failed to agree on a joint statement behind closed doors.

Jo Chol Su, director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Department of International Organizations, on Sunday described the meeting as an "open ignorance of and wanton encroachment" on the North’s sovereignty and a "serious intolerable provocation."

“This is a denial of impartiality, objectivity and equilibrium, lifelines of the UN activities, and an evident manifestation of double-dealing standard," Jo said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

Jo also criticized the Security Council for remaining silent on US military exercises and weapons tests in the region while taking issue with the North’s "self-defensive" activities.

Pyongyang said on Friday it had successfully launched a newly-developed hypersonic missile.

The launch of the missile, dubbed the Hwasong-8, is of great strategic significance for Pyongyang, which is under harsh UN sanctions for its missile and nuclear activities.

Developing the hypersonic missile is one of the five "top priority" tasks in the five-year plan for strategic weapons, KCNA said in a statement.

North Korea says test-fired new hypersonic missile

North Korea says it has test-fired a newly developed hypersonic missile.

Back in January, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, declared that his country was working to develop hypersonic warheads, a nuclear-powered submarine, military reconnaissance satellites and solid-fuel ICBMs.

The latest test, Pyongyang’s third round of launches over the past month, came less than an hour before the North Korean envoy to the United Nations addressed the General Assembly in New York.

Kim Song told the assembly that “nobody can deny the right to self-defense for the DPRK,” calling on the United States to give up its "hostile policy" towards Pyongyang. 

Pyongyang will continue “to develop, test, manufacture and possess the weapon systems equivalent to the ones which are possessed or being developed by them," Kim said, referring to the United States and South Korea.

North Korea rejects call to declare end of Korean War over persisting ‘US hostile policy’

North Korea has rejected as premature a call by the South to declare a formal end to the decades-long Korean War as long as the "US hostile policy" toward Pyongyang persists.

South Korea on Tuesday test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) for the first time. The SLBM was the third and the final of three Changbogo-III Batch-I submarines that South Korea has been building using its own technology.

The two Koreas are still technically at war as the 1950-53 war between them ended in a truce and not a peace treaty.

Communications between the two neighbors have largely been cut in the aftermath of a second US-North Korea summit in Hanoi in February 2019. The summit between Kim and then-US president Donald Trump collapsed after they were ultimately unable to reach an agreement.

The administration of President Joe Biden has expressed a willingness to meet North Korean officials in order to resume denuclearization talks.

Pyongyang, however, has dismissed the US offer of dialogue as a “petty trick,” accusing the Biden administration of pursuing a hostile policy toward North Korea. It views the joint US-South Korea war games as a rehearsal for a possible invasion.

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