North Korea calls US security advisor ‘war maniac’

ANKARA

North Korea on Monday dubbed U.S. Security Advisor John Bolton a “war maniac”, after he termed the launch of short-range missiles by Pyongyang earlier this month a violation of UN resolutions.

According to North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the country has “neither recognized [UN resolutions] nor is bound by them”.

North Korea is under severe UN sanctions since 2006 after it unilaterally test-fired its nuclear arsenal. Sanctions have left it isolated from the international community.

However, Pyongyang launched short-range ballistic missiles on May 4 and 9.

“If any object is launched, it is bound to fly in trajectory. What the U.S. is taking the issue is not about the range but the prohibition of the launch itself using ballistic technology. This is, after all, tantamount to a demand that the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] should give up its self-defensive right,” North Korean statement said.

North Korea insisted that its military drill did not “target anyone nor endangered the surrounding countries”.

“But Bolton makes dogged claims that it constitutes a violation of the resolutions, impudently poking his nose into other's internal matters. It takes little insight to determine that Bolton clearly does have a different mental structure from ordinary people,” the statement said.

“… he is well-known as an anti-DPRK war maniac who fabricated various provocative policies such as designation of our country as axis of evil, preemptive strike and regime change,” it added.

The North Korean statement said that Bolton stood in the “forefront of leading the Iraqi War… and he is now gaining notoriety as a warmonger for his obsession with other wars in the Middle East and South America”.

“After all, it will be fit to call Bolton not a security adviser striving for security but a security-destroying adviser who is wrecking peace and security,” the North Korean statement said.