Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, vowed Sunday that the isolated dictatorship would make a second attempt to launch a spy satellite after last week’s failed attempt. File Photo by Jorge Silva/EPA-EFE
June 4 (UPI) — Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korea‘s supreme leader Kim Jong Un, vowed Sunday that the isolated dictatorship would make a second attempt to launch a spy satellite after last week’s failed attempt.
“We will continue to take active action measures to exercise all the legitimate rights of a sovereign state, including the launch of military reconnaissance satellites,” Kim said in a statement published by the Korean Central News Agency, the government’s propaganda arm.
Kim’s comments came after the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting in response to North Korea’s attempt to launch the spy satellite. During the meeting, the United States and its allies largely clashed with Russia and China over their refusal to condemn North Korea.
The debate prompted Rosemary DiCarlo, the under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs at the United Nations, to condemn the “lack of unity and action” of the Security Council which she said “does little to slow the negative trajectory on the Korean Peninsula.”
“Key peace and security issues, such as the situation on the Korean Peninsula, must be an area for cooperation,” she told the members of the Security Council in a briefing Friday. “Diplomacy — not isolation — is the only way forward.”
Kim, in her own remarks, also condemned the Security Council for holding the meeting which she called “another shameful record of operating as a political appendage of individual countries.”
“It is a common reality today that more than 5,000 satellites with different purposes and missions around the world are carving countless paths in outer space, and even private companies are competitively entering space development,” Kim said.
SpaceX, the U.S.-based space exploration company founded by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, launched 22 satellites into low-Earth orbit alone Sunday as Kim made her remarks.
“Despite this fact, the U.N. Security Council continues discriminatory and ignorant treatment of only discussing the launch of satellites by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a proud member of the U.N.,” she said.
Kim said that the Security Council “persists in prejudicial behavior” toward North Korea and is depriving the nation of its sovereignty.
“Once again, to be clear, the launch of military reconnaissance satellites by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a legitimate countermeasure to deal with the military threat from the United States and its followers, which have already crossed the limit, and is an exercise of self-defense to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.
She added that North Korea “will consistently and strongly respond until the United States and its followers feel bored and admit that their choice was wrong.”