North Korea slammed a joint statement issued by G7 foreign ministers on Tuesday criticizing the country’s nuclear development, saying the group of affluent democracies should be “dismantled immediately.”
The senior diplomats of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union restated their long-standing call for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in a statement issued last week.
The G7 foreign ministers also demanded that Pyongyang stop its nuclear weapons programme and sharply denounced recent North Korean arms supplies to Russia, urging the two countries to “immediately cease all such activities.”
North Korea declared itself a “irreversible” nuclear power last year and has frequently stated that it will never abandon its nuclear programme, which the dictatorship regards as fundamental to its existence.
Jo Chol Su, a senior official in Pyongyang’s foreign ministry, said the recent G7 statement is “resolutely” rejected and “most strongly” condemned, calling it “groundless.”
He claimed that members of the G7, particularly the US, have “disgraceful records of causing significant harm to international peace and security,” and that the body “has lost the justification for its existence.”
According to Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, Jo stated that the “G7, a Cold War relic, should be dismantled immediately.”
He called the outfit a “peace strangler, confrontation maniac, and nuclear war merchant.”
On Monday, US and South Korean defiance leaders modified a key military accord to fight Pyongyang for the first time in a decade, as part of the allies’ vow to expand defense cooperation in the wake of the North’s growing nuclear threats.
