North Korea condemns US for building an ‘Asian NATO’ ahead of talks
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Biden is scheduled to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and South Korean President Yoon for security talks.
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The littoral combat ships sails in the pacific.
North Korea has accused the United States and its allies of attempting to form a "sinister" "Asian NATO" to confront Pyongyang, just hours before Joe Biden and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts meet for security talks.
The country’s state news agency, KCNA, said Wednesday that “the US is hellbent on the military cooperation with its stooges in disregard of the primary security demand and concern by Asia-Pacific countries.”
On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid, Biden was reportedly scheduled to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to discuss the North's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, in the countries' first bilateral meeting in five years.
On its account, Pyongyang has opposed plans for joint missile detection and tracking exercise near Hawaii in August by the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
“Black waves in the North Atlantic will break the calm in the Pacific”
Pyongyang routinely condemns joint military exercises between US and South Korean forces as rehearsals for an invasion.
Read more: S. Korea, US launch 8 missiles
It is worth noting that North Korea conducted a record 31 ballistic missile tests this year most notably one involving its largest intercontinental ballistic missile to date.
North Korea's foreign ministry said over the weekend that the resumption of US-Japan-South Korea drills exposed the hypocrisy behind Washington's calls for a return to nuclear talks without preconditions, three years after talks between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed.
The foreign ministry added that the exercise "revealed once again that the US ambition to overthrow our system by force has not changed."
After years of international sanctions that failed to prevent North Korea from developing, Biden is under pressure to devise a more robust approach to North Korea.
The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed, on Tuesday, that Biden, Kishida, and Yoon will discuss how to rein in North Korean provocations.
He added that the trilateral summit “will be mainly focused on the continuing threat from [North Korea], particularly after an extended period of intense testing and other provocative activities that the North Koreans have undertaken”.
Sullivan also stated that the three leaders will "discuss what we will do on the economic pressure side, particularly when it comes to depriving the North of hard currency that they use to fund their nuclear and missile programs."
The KCNA statement has also criticized the “military alliance” as “motivated by Japan and South Korea’s kowtowing to the US,” stressing that it was a “dangerous prelude to the creation of an Asian version of NATO”.
Kim Hyo-myung, a researcher at North Korea's International Society for Political Research, blamed NATO for the Ukraine war in a separate commentary carried by the news agency, adding that there were "ominous signs that sooner or later the black waves in the North Atlantic will break the calm in the Pacific."
Kim added: “NATO is nothing more than a servant of the realization of the US hegemony strategy and a tool of local aggression.”
Read more: DPRK: US is planning to establish Asia-style NATO
