North Korea criticizes ‘hostile’ US, South Korea in UN speech

North Korea's head of delegation, Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil Yon, spoke today at the last session of the United Nations General Assembly, in a brief speech that extolled the leadership of new ruler Kim Jong Un and roundly criticized the United States for its supposed abuse of the UN Security Council, as well as the "hostile" policies of both the US and South Korea.

Pak criticized America's censure of an exceptionally controversial April missile launch by North Korea, claiming it was "legitimate and peaceful," and that the UN Security Council was "abused" by the US for criticizing it.

Much of the brief address was devoted to the frosty relationship between the US and the DPRK, upon which Pak blamed the possibility of a devastating nuclear confrontation on the Korean Peninsula.

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"At the root of the US hostile policy against the DPRK that has continued for over half a century lies its intention to destroy the ideas and system chosen by our people, and to occupy the whole of the Korean peninsula to use it as a stepping-stone for realizing its strategy of dominating the whole of Asia," he told the General Assembly.

Pak accused the US of needlessly provoking North Korea by dint of its military exercises, and warned "the DPRK's patience does not mean it has no bound."

He defended the DPRK's "war deterrent," claiming that it "is our principled stand to react to the aggressors' reckless provocations with immediate corresponding strike in defense of the nation's dignity and the country's sovereignty and confront the war of aggression with a just war of reunifying the country."

North Korea's nuclear ambitions were roundly blamed on the US' "hostile" policies.

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South Korea did not fare much better: Pak claimed that the incumbent South Korean authorities "completely negated all inter-Korean agreements" and "rubbed salt into the wounds of our people … bringing the inter-Korean relations into a total bankruptcy."

He added, ominously: "History will bring them justice."

Kil Yon also claimed that the UNGA's Third Committee and Human Rights Council were subject to "double standards," and added that in the DPRR's estimation, humans rights violations were either ignored or roundly criticized depending on the given nations relationship with the West.

The DPRK delegation expressed their support for the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, outlined in Brazil earlier this year.