North Korea said Saturday that U.S. President Joe Biden had revealed "his deep-seated hostility" toward Pyongyang and had encroached on its right to self-defense by criticizing its latest missile test, the official KCNA news agency said.
North Korea on Friday claimed it had launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile. Biden said that the test had violated U.N. Security Council resolutions but that he remained open to diplomacy with Pyongyang.
Ri Pyong Chol, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, said the missile test was self-defensive against threats posed by South Korea and the United States with their joint military exercises and advanced weapons.
"We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive faulting the regular test fire, exercise of our state's right to self-defense, as the violation of U.N. 'resolutions' and openly revealing his deep-seated hostility," Ri said in a statement carried by KCNA.
"Such remarks from the U.S. president are an undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defense and provocation to it."
Ri warned that Washington might face "something that is not good" if it continued to make "thoughtless remarks without thinking of the consequences."
