North Korea has condemned Japan’s release of treated radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, in a move that one expert said aimed to show solidarity with China and Russia. 

The DPRK’s foreign ministry called the release of water from Fukushima an “unethical act of destroying the geo-ecological environment and of threatening the existence of mankind,” in an English statement released by the Korean Central News Agency on Thursday. 

“Japan will be held wholly accountable for all the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its unethical crime unsettled forever,” a spokesperson for Pyongyang’s foreign