YEONPYEONG, South Korea: North Korea test fired another short-range missile off its east coast yesterday and said it would take “self-defense measures” if the UN Security Council punished it for this week’s nuclear test.
“If the UN Security Council makes a further provocation, it will be inevitable for us to take further self-defense measures,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea said an increasingly aggressive North may be preparing fresh provocations after Chinese fishing boats were spotted leaving a disputed sea border on the west coast.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said there had been no sign of stepped up North Korean military activity. “We have not seen ... any unusual troop movements by the North to accompany their rather aggressive language over the past few days,” Morrell said in Singapore.
North Korea also accused the Security Council of hypocrisy. “There is a limit to our patience,” the statement said. “The nuclear test conducted in our nation this time is the Earth’s 2,054th nuclear test. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council have conducted 99.99 percent of the total nuclear tests.”
Meanwhile, initial US testing to determine whether North Korea fired a nuclear device on Monday proved “inconclusive,” said a US official yesterday.
“The first test results came in inconclusive. They did not find anything that could confirm a nuclear device was detonated,” said the US official, who refused to be named.
