North Korea criticizes U.S. and allies for pursuing substitute to UN sanctions monitoring panel

North Korea denounced the United States and other countries on Sunday for seeking an alternative to the United Nations monitoring panel that enforced sanctions against Pyongyang. North Korean officials stated that such a move would be “doomed to face self-destruction.”

North Korea’s Ambassador to the U.N., Kim Song, issued a statement condemning South Korea, the United States, Japan, and 47 other countries for jointly calling for “objective” and “independent” analysis regarding the enforcement of anti-North Korea sanctions. He said this came after the mandate of the panel of experts ended last month due to Russia’s veto on its renewal.

Officials mentioned that during a trip to Seoul in April, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. would work with South Korea to explore “creative” and “out of the box” ways to find an alternative to the experts’ panel, even outside of the U.N. system.

The North Korean envoy asserted that the termination of the monitoring panel represented a judgment by history on an organization that was illegal and bred plots. He portrayed the panel of experts as an instrument employed by the United States and other Western nations to extinguish a sovereign state’s right to exist.

He stated in a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency that the hostile forces might establish the second and third expert panels in the future, but they were all destined to face self-destruction with time. He warned that if the U.S. and its allies persistently pursued the anachronistic hostile policy toward the DPRK, they would face a more miserable strategic defeat, without drawing a lesson from the recent case. He used the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.