TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea criticized a new South Korea-led grouping set up to monitor the implementation of sanctions against it, saying on Monday it would thrive no matter what and it was not desperate to get sanctions lifted.
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, or MSMT, established by South Korea and 10 other countries, including the U.S. and Japan, in October, began work last week, pledging to ensure the full implementation of U.N. sanctions against North Korea.
Sanctions are widely believed to have crippled the North’s isolated economy but a senior government official was defiant, saying sanctions would have a serious impact on those who imposed them.
“We strongly warn that the anachronistic acts of the hostile forces foolishly attempting to block the exercise of the legitimate right of the DPRK … can bring about serious adverse effects hard to be coped with by them,” said the unidentified chief of the external policy office at North Korea’s foreign ministry, as cited by the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name.
“The U.S. should know that however it may play diplomatic tricks and blame its servants, it can never bring back the miserable fate of the worn-out sanctions mechanism against the DPRK and that the more it clings to the sanctions tools, the more it feels inconvenience, not us.”
The MSMT is a successor to the U.N. Panel of Experts on North Korea, which was disbanded in April, and operates outside the U.N. framework.
The term of the U.N. expert panel, which had overseen sanctions enforcements against North Korea since 2009, expired at the end of April after Russia vetoed the renewal of its mandate in March. China abstained.
At that time, the U.S. said Russia’s veto was a “self-interested effort to bury the panel’s reporting on its own collusion” with North Korea.
The sanctions on North Korea are aimed at pressuring it to give up its nuclear weapon and missile programs but the North Korean official cited by KCNA said negotiating for sanctions relief was “not a matter of concern.”
“The U.S. barbarous sanctions have made the DPRK more perfectly understand the way that it can survive, self-sustain and be strong despite the severest external circumstances and have become a decisive factor in hastening the building of a powerful force that no one can ignore,” the official said.
“The DPRK will never thirst for a lifting of sanctions, but will never overlook the provocations of the U.S. and its followers to encroach upon the legitimate sovereignty of the DPRK under the pretext of implementing sanctions and strongly counter them with resolute actions.”
The U.S. and its allies believe Russia has violated multiple sanctions on North Korea through arms transactions, which intensified following a major military agreement signed with North Korea in June last year.
North Korea has been suspected of sending weapons to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine. South Korea said in October that the North had sent about 7,000 containers of weapons to Russia over the previous two months, bringing the total number of containers to 20,000.
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Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said on Sunday North Korea was estimated to be providing 50% of Russia’s ammunition demand.
Russia is “significantly increasing production” and making substantial progress in expanding its output of ammunition, particularly glide bombs and drones, said Kyrylo Budanov told a press conference.
“In this aspect, one cannot but mention their, what we can now call, strategic ally North Korea, which meets … the front’s ammunition needs by 50%. Fifty percent of the ammunition is Korean ammunition.”
Budanov added that North Korea had begun large-scale deliveries of 170 mm Koksan self-propelled howitzers and 240 mm multiple rocket launcher systems to Russia, without elaborating.
South Korean intelligence noted that North Korea supplied Russia with 200 long-range artillery pieces. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have not commented on it.
Ukraine announced last week that it struck a North Korean 170 mm self-propelled artillery unit M1989 Koksan for the first time, marking the first documented destruction of this type of self-propelled artillery system during the Russia-Ukraine war.
The M1989 Koksan is a code name for a North Korean 40-ton self-propelled artillery system that was first seen at a parade in the North Korean city of Koksan in 1989. It is a development of the M1978 system, which was developed in the 1970s.
Edited by Mike Firn.