North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reacts during a celebration for nuclear scientists and engineers who contributed to a hydrogen bomb test, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on September 10, 2017.
LONDON - 16 September 2017: A senior Pyongyang official said Friday that North Korea will defy sanctions “for a 1,000 years”, The Daily Telegraph reported.
In a rare media briefing to a handful of reporters in Beijing only hours after Pyongyang fired an intermediate ballistic missile over Japan, the official also warned of the growing “power” of the North’s military.
North Korea has defied a series of UN sanctions with increasingly provocative tests, including the detonation of what it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb earlier this month and the firing of two missiles over Japan, a close US ally.
The latest launch on Friday saw a furious response from Washington which called on Russia and China to do more to economically squeeze the nuclear-armed state.
But Choe Kang-il, deputy director general for North American affairs at the North's foreign ministry, said: “You can impose whatever sanctions you want, but no matter how long these sanctions last - whether it is for a hundred or a thousand years - we will keep stepping up efforts and continue with our planned tests.”
Choe justified the test by saying it was carried out “for the sanctity of our autonomy and nationhood, and to reveal the power of our deterrence.”
Choe said anxiety in Japan was not a concern for leaders in Pyongyang.
“It is Japan’s own business if it scares them,” he said. “Our strategy is to strengthen our deterrence.”
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