U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton has come in for criticism by North Korea after stating that the country’s May 4 and May 9 launches of a new type of short-range ballistic missile violated United Nations Security Council resolutions.
A statement attributed to a “spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” published in the Korean Central News Agency, criticized Bolton for the second time in recent weeks.
“Bolton, U.S. National Security Adviser has taken the issue over the regular military drill of our army, claiming that it is a violation of the ‘resolutions’ of the United Nations Security Council [all sic],” the North Korean statement noted.
It described Bolton’s assessment as “more than ignorant.”
“It is not at all strange that perverse words always come out from the mouth of a structurally defective guy, and such a human defect deserves an earlier vanishing,” the statement concluded.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1718, passed in 2006, demands that North Korea “not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile.” The resolution was passed in response to the country’s first nuclear test in October of that year.
Shortly after Bolton commented on the tests, U.S. President Donald J. Trump chimed in on Twitter to say that he was less concerned by the North Korean tests. “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump said, while in Japan for an official visit.
“I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse,” Trump added, commenting on a separate North Korean state media commentary that criticized statements made by U.S. Democratic presidential contender and former Vice President Joe Biden about Kim Jong Un.
Trump speculated that the North Korean criticism of Biden may have been sending him a signal instead.
North Korea’s May 4 launch of a short-range ballistic missile marked the first ballistic missile test by the country after a 521 day pause. Last year, on April 20, Kim Jong Un presented a directive to the Korean Workers’ Party stating that the country would no longer carry out launches of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.
Kim’s self-imposed moratorium on the testing of ICBMs was not extended to cover missiles of a shorter range. The April 20 moratorium also covered nuclear testing, with Kim stating that North Korea had completed its qualitative nuclear development in 2017.