In comments carried by Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a spokesperson for the DPRK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) slammed the “puppet” government of the UK for its decision earlier in the week to place asset freezes on North Korea’s state security and police forces.
“This act of the UK is a despicable political scheme which follows in the footsteps of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK,” the spokesperson said, pointing to the U.S. government’s praise for the new sanctions as proof of their hostile intent. “The UK will be definitely made to pay the price.”
“The UK, not being content with its policy to follow the U.S. tail, is hell-bent on committing a brazen act of putting the organs for internal security of a country on the list of its sanctions,” they continued, alleging that they were “based on fabrications provided by the ‘defector’ scum.”
The new designations — which targeted the DPRK’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS) Correctional Bureau for their role in operating the country’s political prison camp system — came as part of a greater wave of new UK sanctions targeting serious human rights violations around the world.
They marked the British government’s first-ever unilateral sanctions against North Korea since the country’s formal exit from the European Union in January — an exit which the North Korean MFA said Saturday should have resulted in a more independent foreign policy.
“If the UK withdrew from the EU, asserting its ‘identity,’ it should not blindly follow the U.S. tail but behave itself on its own viewpoint instead,” they said.
North Korea and the UK established diplomatic relations in 2000.
The British embassy in Pyongyang has, however, been closed since late May — a move linked to coronavirus-related restrictions in place since early this year.
In comments carried by Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a spokesperson for the DPRK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) slammed the "puppet" government of the UK for its decision earlier in the week to place asset freezes on North Korea’s state security and police forces.
