NATIONAL SECURITY/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/UN: “North Korea escalated its criticism of the United States, as well as its neighboring allies, on Tuesday [8-8-17] by warning that it will mobilize all its resources to take ‘physical action’ in retaliation against the latest round of United Nations sanctions.
The statement, carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, was the strongest indication yet that the country could conduct another nuclear or missile test, as it had often done in response to past United Nations sanctions. Until now, the North’s response to the latest sanctions had been limited to strident yet vague warnings, such as threatening retaliation ‘thousands of times over.’…
North Korea’s statement on Tuesday appeared to defy efforts by both Washington and Beijing to defuse the tense situation.
On Monday, while attending a regional security meeting of foreign ministers in Manila, the United States’ secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, kept the door open for talks with North Korea, suggesting that the country should stop its recent string of missile launches to set the stage for negotiations over its weapons programs. At the same venue, Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China said he told his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong-ho, that the North should stop carrying out nuclear and missile tests.
Incensed by the North’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month, the United Nations Security Council adopted a new sanctions resolution over the weekend, the eighth since the country conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Backers of the resolution said the new sanctions would cut North Korea’s meager annual export revenue by about a third, impeding its ability to raise cash for its weapons programs.”
-Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea Threatens ‘Physical Action’ in Response to U.N. Sanctions,” The New York Times online, Aug. 8, 2017