Just before the UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose further trade restrictions on North Korea, North Korea threatened the United States with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The Washington Post has the story:
Before the vote, North Korea issued statements describing Washington as a “criminal threatening global peace” and threatening preemptive nuclear action.
Although Pyongyang routinely vows to demolish the United States in a sacred war, the threat issued Thursday marked a major escalation of rhetoric just hours before the U.N. Security Council discussed new sanctions aiming at reining in the North’s weapons program and restricting illicit overseas trade.
Calling the sanctions part of a U.S.-led “war of aggression,” the North vowed to “display the might . . . it built up decades after decades and put an end to the evil cycle of tension,” according to a statement published by the nation’s state-run news agency and attributed to a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The Associated Press quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the North would exercise its right for “a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors” on grounds that Washington was pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.