U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, walks with China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023. (Leah Millis/Pool/AFP via Getty Images/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — North Korea criticized remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his trip to China, accusing him of threatening military action should China fail to put pressure on its neighbor and ally.
During the visit, Blinken made "threatening remarks that the U.S. would take military measures China doesn't like, together with Japan and South Korea, if China doesn't move, saying that China is in the one and only position for pressurizing Pyongyang," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said. KCNA attributed the comments to Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the department of U.S. affairs at the country's foreign ministry.
The criticism comes days after Blinken wrapped up his two-day trip to Beijing, where he spoke with President Xi Jinping about topics including North Korea, Russia's war in Ukraine and Taiwan. President Joe Biden hailed the visit as representing progress toward restoring U.S.-China ties.
Blinken spoke with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin after the China trip to update him on the discussions, including North Korea's "increasingly destabilizing actions," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement on Friday.
The root cause of the tensions on the Korean peninsula is the U.S., not North Korea or its neighbors, KCNA said, citing Kwon. North Korea won't refrain from exercising its right to self defense, unless the U.S. stops violating its sovereignty and takes a clear move to drop its hostile policies, it added.
KCNA called Blinken a "low-class diplomat" incapable of detecting the nature of relations between countries. His words are "a manifestation of his dangerous hegemony-oriented mental state," the agency said, citing Kwon.
In a separate KCNA report, North Korea slammed the U.S. for deploying strategic assets including the the USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered, guided-missile submarine, to South Korea.
The deployment "presupposes irretrievable catastrophic consequences to peace and security in the region and the rest of the world," KCNA said citing Kang Jin Song, an international affairs analyst in North Korea.
The move will only result in triggering North Korea to bolster its nuclear force, KCNA said.
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