North Korea calls missile tests legitimate
Iran Press TV
Mon Jul 21, 2014 7:49AM GMT
North Korea says its latest missile tests are a legitimate exercise in self-defense, criticizing South Korea and the United States for calling the exercises provocative.
The National Defense Commission (NDC), the North's top military body, on Monday called the charges absurd and hypocritical.
"The real provocations and threats made to the Korean Peninsula are the whole gamut of political and military moves being pushed forward by the US," an NDC spokesman said, referring to the annual joint drills by the US and South Korea.
The North has conducted a series of rocket and missile tests over the past month in response to large-scale military drills South Korean and US forces conduct every year.
North Korea has repeatedly renounced the exercises as "rehearsals for invasion."
"The more desperately the US and South Korean authorities resort to gangster-like hostile acts, the more deadly retaliatory actions they will face," the NDC spokesman said, warning that any Pyongyang response would come "like a bolt from the blue."
North and South Korea remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace deal.
DB/HJL
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