SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (AP) – The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday accused the United States (US) of “gangster-like” hypocrisy for criticising her country’s failed launch of a military spy satellite and insisted a successful launch will be made soon.
Kim Yo-jong said North Korea’s efforts to acquire space-based reconnaissance capabilities were a legitimate exercise of its sovereign right and restated the country’s rejection of United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions that ban it from conducting any launch involving ballistic missile technology. Her comments on state media came a day after the rocket carrying the satellite failed. North Korea said the rocket lost thrust after a stage separation and crashed in waters off the Korean Peninsula’s western coast. Washington, South Korea and Japan had quickly criticised the launch.
A spokesperson at the US National Security Council Adam Hodge, said Washington strongly condemns the North Korean launch because it used banned ballistic missile technology, raised tensions and risked destabilising security in the region and beyond.
The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on the failed launch yesterday afternoon at the request of Japan, the US, United Kingdom, France, Albania, Ecuador and Malta.
In her statement, Kim Yo-jong briefly mentioned Hodge’s comments before saying the US “is letting loose a hackneyed gibberish prompted by its brigandish and abnormal thinking”.
“If the DPRK’s satellite launch should be particularly censured, the US and all other countries, which have already launched thousands of satellites, should be denounced. This is nothing but sophism of self-contradiction,” she said, using the initials of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
