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President Yoon Suk-yeol (left) speaks to US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a trilateral summit held on June 29 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain. (Yonhap News)

The spokesperson of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry slammed what they called the “US-Japan-south Korea tripartite military alliance” as part of a US plan to “contain Russia and China at the same time” by forming “a military alliance like NATO in the Asia-Pacific region,” the North’s state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Sunday.

Responding to a question by KCNA, the spokesperson made the above argument while stating, “During the recent NATO summit, the chief executives of the US, Japan, and south Korea put their heads together for confrontation with the DPRK and discussed the dangerous joint military countermeasures against it including the launch of tripartite joint military exercises.”

Earlier, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, US President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met at a trilateral summit held in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday — the first of its kind in four years and nine months occasioned by the NATO summit — after which they announced that they “discussed enhancing trilateral cooperation throughout the Indo-Pacific, particularly in regard to addressing the evolving threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program,” which the North’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson was responding to.

However, the spokesperson’s statement did not appear in the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s party-run newspaper accessible to the North Korean public.

The spokesperson continued, “The recent NATO summit more clearly proves that the US pursues a plan to contain Russia and China at the same time by [. . .] forming a military alliance like NATO in the Asia-Pacific region and keeps the US-Japan-south Korea tripartite military alliance as an important means of materializing the plan,” referencing the fact that NATO adopted a new “strategic concept” designating Russia as “the most significant and direct threat” and China as a “challenge” — an effort spearheaded by the US for the first time in 12 years.

The spokesperson added: “The reality clearly shows that the real purpose of the US spreading the rumor about ‘threat from north Korea’ is to provide an excuse for attaining military supremacy over the Asia-Pacific region. [. . .] The prevailing situation more urgently calls for building up the country’s defences to actively cope with the rapid aggravation of the security environment of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world.”

They emphasized that the North will “reliably defend the sovereignty and interests of the country and its territory from all sorts of threats” and fulfill its “responsible duty” to ensure peace and security both on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.

The statement can be interpreted as an expression of North Korea’s will to strengthen its trilateral cooperation with China and Russia in response to the movement toward stronger security cooperation among South Korea, the US and Japan through a demonstration of solidarity with China and Russia.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]