Three North Korean ambassadors slammed the United States in interviews with Chinese, Russian and Syrian media last week, while taking aim at ROK-U.S. joint military exercises that began Monday.

Experts said the interviews with Russia’s TASS, China’s Global Times, and Syria’s Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), coming during a week when top North Korean officials criticized the drills in state media, demonstrate Pyongyang’s interest in legitimizing its perspective abroad. 

“It’s quite rare for [the North Korean ambassadors] to express those consistent messages, in public and en masse like this one,” said Kim Heung-kyu, director of the U.S.-China Policy