North Korea vows to continue what it calls self-defense efforts, KCNA says

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SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea said on Saturday it has no choice but to continue efforts to build up capabilities for self-defense and accused the United States and South Korea of pushing the Korean Peninsula into war scenarios.

“The DPRK will further intensify its practical efforts to deter the military threat of the hostile forces and maintain the balance of forces in the region,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said on state news agency KCNA.

The spokesperson blamed Washington and Seoul for staging “various sorts of war plots more than 20 times” this year, leaving no option for Pyongyang but to thoroughly deter the danger of outbreak of a nuclear war.

In a separate statement, North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, condemned the UN Secretary-General’s recent criticism of the nation’s firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and said weapons testing is for “self-defense.”

North Korea on Thursday flexed its military muscle with the test of a huge new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed Hwasong-19.

North Korea’s ICBM launch on Thursday came shortly after it started dispatching soldiers to aid Russia’s war in Ukraine, which drew swift condemnation from Washington and its allies in South Korea, Japan and Europe, as well as the United Nations secretary-general.

The launch flew higher than any previous North Korean missile, according to the North as well as militaries in South Korea and Japan that tracked its flight deep into space before it splashed down in the ocean between Japan and Russia.

On Friday, the South Korean and U.S. air forces conducted first-ever joint live-fire attack drills that involved the Global Hawk and the Reaper drones, dropping GPS-guided munitions in simulated strikes against enemy target, South Korea’s air force said.

(Reporting by Cynthia Kim in SeoulEditing by Matthew Lewis and Deepa Babington)