North Korea sends ‘tit-for-tat’ letter to UN Security Council right after Kim Jong Un’s China visit, in ‘strength-for-strength’ standoff

[Financial News] North Korea is taking its offensive against South Korea to the highest level, sending a retaliatory letter denouncing the South Korean government to the president of the United Nations Security Council a day after leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to China.
The fact that North Korea carried out the major diplomatic event of Kim’s visit to China and sent a letter to the Security Council at the same time appears to be a message to the outside world that it will not yield to pressure from the international community.
According to the Foreign Ministry on the 26th, North Korea sent a letter criticizing South Korea to the president of the UN Security Council on the 25th, shortly after Kim made a surprise visit to Dandong, China, via the New Yalu River Bridge.
North Korea responded in kind just three days after the Foreign Ministry sent a letter to the president of the UN Security Council on the 22nd condemning the landmine explosion involving North Korean troops inside the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
In the letter, North Korea repeated its familiar far-fetched claim that it had nothing to do with the landmine explosion and that it was a “self-staged act by the South Korean side.” It claimed that South Korea had violated Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter by threatening North Korean troops deployed for border fortification work with gunfire. It further insisted that it had the legal right to exercise self-defense, as set out in Article 51 of the UN Charter, if even 1 mm of North Korean territory were violated.
Alongside North Korea’s diplomatic offensive, military tensions in areas along the inter-Korean border are also approaching a critical point. Kim Yo Jong, director of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s General Affairs Department, recently said in a statement that North Korea intends to resume loudspeaker broadcasts aimed at South Korea along the entire border this month.
Even amid the risk of clashes between the two Koreas, the Ministry of Unification is instead hoping for an improvement in inter-Korean relations in the wake of Kim’s visit to China. An official at the ministry said that day, “We hope Kim’s visit to Dandong, China, will lead to constructive contributions to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and the resumption of dialogue among neighboring countries.”
[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter