North Korea rejected tighter United Nations sanctions aimed at curbing its nuclear expansion, describing the move as an "act of war" and vowing to avenge U.S. sympathizers who approved it.
The U.S. "must abandon its hostile policy" toward North Korea, "learn to coexist" and "wake up from its pipe-dream of our country giving up nuclear weapons," the Korean Central News Agency said Sunday, citing a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
"We will further consolidate our self-defensive nuclear deterrence aimed at fundamentally eradicating the U.S. nuclear threats, blackmail and hostile moves by establishing the practical balance of force with the U.S.," the Foreign Ministry statement read.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions Friday targeting North Korea's economy after the launch of a ballistic missile last month that Kim Jong Un's regime said shows it can now target the entire continental U.S.
The success of President Donald Trump's administration in achieving the resolution won praise from the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland. "That was a good move," the senator said on Fox News Sunday, "a major accomplishment."
But the resolution doesn't include even harsher measures sought by the Trump administration that would ban all oil imports and freeze international assets of the North Korean government and its leader.
The new resolution cuts deliveries of petroleum products including diesel and kerosene by almost 90 percent, to the equivalent of 500,000 barrels per year starting Jan. 1. In September, the council demanded imports to be cut to the equivalent of 2 million barrels from 4.5 million barrels. The new resolution would also cap crude imports at current levels of about 4 million barrels annually.
Also under the new sanctions, roughly 100,000 North Koreans working in other countries will be expelled within two years.
The sanctions are intended to hurt North Korea in two vital ways: Cutting refined petroleum imports would exacerbate the country's fuel crisis, and expelling foreign guest workers would substantially reduce remittances, an important source of hard currency.
"We define this 'sanctions resolution' rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region, and categorically reject the 'resolution,'" the North said in its statement.
To try to reduce smuggling and ship-to-ship transfers of North Korean coal and other banned goods, the measure says countries can "seize, inspect, freeze [impound] any vessel in their ports" if there are grounds to believe the vessel was used to transport banned items. The measure also prohibits insurance for all North Korean-affiliated vessels, but it stopped short of authorizing foreign fleets to board suspect vessels without their owners' permission in international waters.
The resolution's passage is a political victory for the Trump administration, which has spent much of 2017 urging other nations to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea. While much of that work has focused on China -- North Korea's top trading partner -- the administration has sought to close off all foreign sources of income for Kim's regime. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley have praised nations such as Mexico and Peru for expelling North Korean envoys, as well as allies like Kuwait for agreeing to cut back on their use of North Korean workers.
The U.S. should not forget for "even a second" that Pyongyang is now capable of "posing a substantial nuclear threat" to its mainland and those countries that approved the new resolution against the regime will be responsible for all the consequences, the Korean news agency statement said. "We will make sure forever and ever that they pay a heavy price for what they have done."
China on Saturday called for "all sides" to implement the U.N. resolutions "in a comprehensive and balanced manner."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said China hoped "all parties will work with China to promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Xinhua news agency reported.
Trump praised the Security Council's decision on Twitter, saying "The World wants Peace, not Death!" State Department spokesman Heather Nauert said in a separate tweet that "Secretary Tillerson and Ambassador @nikkihaley agree: our pressure campaign against #NorthKorea must, and will, continue until denuclearization is achieved."
North Korea has repeatedly defied Security Council resolutions to halt its nuclear weapons and missile testing, conducting six nuclear tests that demonstrate major progress with its missiles. The U.N.'s top envoy to North Korea, Jeffrey Feltman, said this month that he was "deeply worried" about the prospects of a diplomatic solution to the crisis after meeting officials in Pyongyang.
Haley said after Friday's vote that more could be done to isolate Kim's regime.
"Should the North Korean regime conduct another nuclear or ballistic missile test, this resolution commits the Security Council to take even further action," Haley said. "It sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishment and isolation."
The governments of South Korea and Japan both issued statements Saturday welcoming the tighter sanctions.
U.S. missile plans
Citing North Korea's growing nuclear and ballistic missile threat, the Trump administration is moving to vastly expand the homeland missile defense system despite warnings that the planned upgrades may not succeed.
Immediate plans call for building two $1 billion radar installations and adding 20 rocket interceptors to the 44 already deployed in underground silos at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The Pentagon also is taking steps to launch new satellites to help each interceptor's "kill vehicle" find, crash into and destroy incoming ballistic missiles high above the atmosphere.
The expected cost is about $10.2 billion over five years, on top of more than $40 billion already spent for the system. On Thursday, Congress passed a short-term government funding bill that includes $200 million to start preparing construction of additional missile silos in Alaska.
But government reports and interviews with technical experts suggest the planned upgrades, including a redesigned kill vehicle, are unlikely to protect the United States from a limited-scale ballistic missile attack, the system's stated mission.
One concern is the administration's rush to expand the system.
The first new radar is scheduled to be made operational in 2020 before any flight testing is conducted. And the first set of redesigned kill vehicles will be installed in late 2021 -- after just one flight test of a prototype. All the new interceptors and kill vehicles are supposed to be in place by the end of 2023.
Pentagon officials have told Congress that they have confidence in the system -- but that it needs improvements. In April 2016, Vice Adm. James Syring, then head of the missile agency, told a Senate subcommittee that he wanted to "replace the less reliable kill vehicles."
More details about the system's upgrades, and their expected costs, are anticipated early next year when the administration completes its Ballistic Missile Defense Review, a document aimed at setting policy and priorities.
Even more ambitious missile defense projects may be on the way.
On Dec. 12, Trump signed a defense authorization bill that requires the missile agency to develop plans to ultimately deploy 104 interceptors -- perhaps by building new missile silos in the Midwest or on the East Coast. The agency also is preparing options to deploy space-based laser weapons for missile defense.
Information for this article was contributed by Kanga Kong, Kambiz Foroohar and Yuji Nakamura of Bloomberg News; by Russell Goldman of The New York Times; by David Willman of Tribune News Service; and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/25/2017