North Korea said Thursday that it would build a missile capable of striking the US in the wake of the UN Security Council’s tightened sanctions against the country.
In what The New York Times labeled as Kim Jong Un’s “boldest challenge,” Pyongyang also vowed to launch more long-range rockets and conduct its third nuclear test.
The threats were in defiance of a resolution issued by the Security Council on Tuesday condemning Pyongyang for test-firing a missile in December and tightening existing sanctions on Kim’s regime.
According to the London Telegraph, Pyongyang also declared that further talks on removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula were now not possible.
Describing the UN Security Council as “a marionette of the US,” North Korea’s National Defense Commission said the new nuclear test would be part of its action against the “sworn enemy of the Korean people.”
According to the Telegraph, North Korean state media wrote:
“The UNSC should apologize for its crime of seriously encroaching upon the independence of a sovereign state … and repeal all the unreasonable ‘resolutions’ at once.”
Pyongyang declared that a “nuclear test of a higher level” would be carried out.
According to a Reuters report, the commission also reaffirmed in its declaration that December’s rocket launch was a peaceful bid to send a satellite into space, though its rocket launches also had a military purpose — to strike and attack the US.
The National Defense Commission reportedly said:
“We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States.”
This article was originally published by Global Post.