Kim Jong-un’s sister slams U.S. for criticizing failed satellite tv for pc launch

SEOUL, South Korea — The highly effective sister of North Korean Kim Jong-un on Thursday accused the United States of “gangster-like” hypocrisy for criticizing her nation’s failed launch of a army spy satellite tv for pc and insisted a profitable launch will likely be made quickly.

Kim Yo-jong mentioned North Korea’s efforts to accumulate space-based reconnaissance capabilities have been a reputable train of its sovereign proper and restated the nation’s rejection of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban it from conducting any launch involving ballistic missile expertise.

Her feedback on state media got here a day after the rocket carrying the satellite tv for pc failed. North Korea mentioned the rocket misplaced thrust after a stage separation and crashed in waters off the Korean Peninsula’s western coast.

Washington, South Korea and Japan had shortly criticized the launch. Adam Hodge, a spokesperson on the U.S. National Security Council, mentioned Washington strongly condemns the North Korean launch as a result of it used banned ballistic missile expertise, raised tensions and risked destabilizing safety within the area and past.

In her assertion, Kim Yo-jong briefly talked about Hodge’s feedback earlier than saying the United States “is letting loose a hackneyed gibberish prompted by its brigandish and abnormal thinking.”

“If the DPRK’s satellite launch should be particularly censured, the U.S. and all other countries, which have already launched thousands of satellites, should be denounced. This is nothing but sophism of self-contradiction,” she mentioned, utilizing the initials of North Korea’s formal title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She famous how the United States carefully displays the North by means of its personal reconnaissance satellites and different aerial property, calling the Americans a “group of gangsters” who would deem it as “illegal and threatening” had North Korea tried to ship a satellite tv for pc into area by balloon.

“The far-fetched logic that only the DPRK should not be allowed to do so according to the (U.N. Security Council’s) ‘resolution’ which bans the use of ballistic rocket technology irrespective of its purpose, though other countries are doing so, is clearly a gangster-like and wrong one of seriously violating the DPRK’s right to use space and illegally oppressing it,” she mentioned.

“It is certain that the DPRK’s military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” she added.

Citing what she described as U.S. hostility towards the North, Kim reiterated that Pyongyang has no intent to reengage in negotiations with Washington, which have stalemated since 2019 due to disagreements over crippling U.S.-led sanctions imposed over the North’s nuclear weapons and missiles program.

Wednesday’s launch prolonged a provocative run in North Korean army demonstrations, together with the test-firings of round 100 missiles because the begin of 2022 that underscored Kim Jong Un’s makes an attempt to accumulate twin capacity to conduct nuclear strikes on each the U.S. mainland and South Korea.

Wednesday’s failed launch raised safety jitters in South Korea and Japan, the place residents in some areas have been briefly urged to take shelter shortly after the launch. South Korea’s army later salvaged an object presumed to be a part of the North Korean rocket in waters 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the southwestern island of Eocheongdo and plans to investigate the expertise.

A army spy satellite tv for pc is considered one of a number of high-tech weapons programs that Kim has publicly vowed to develop to bolster his nuclear deterrent within the face of U.S. sanctions and strain. Other weapons on his want listing embody a multi-warhead missile, a nuclear submarine, a solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile and a hypersonic missile.