N. Korean media undaunted by UNSC statement against rocket launch

By Kim Hyun

SEOUL, April 14 (Yonhap) -- Unfazed by a U.N. statement condemning its rocket launch, North Korea on Tuesday continued to celebrate its claimed orbiting of a satellite and insisted the launch was receiving international support.

The North's state media, which earlier warned that any U.N. attempt to punish the
country's rocket launch would wreck six-party denuclearization talks, has yet to
respond to Monday's (New York time) adoption of the U.N. Security Council
presidential statement but kept up the celebratory mood.
"Regional organizations and research groups of the Juche (self-reliance) ideology
and military-first politics in many countries celebrate the successful launch of
satellite Kwangmyongsong-2," one headline said in a report carried by the North's
official Korean Central News Agency.
Quoting foreign statements North Korea claimed to have received, state media
expressed strong discontent over the United States and its allies having sought
sanctions against North Korea and arguing its April 5 satellite launch was
intended to disguise a long-range missile test.
The Switzerland-Korea Committee "slashed at the moves of the U.S. imperialists
and their followers distorting the satellite launch as 'launch of long-range
missile' and crying out for 'sanctions' at the UNSC," a report said Monday.
In its statement, the U.N. Security Council condemned the North Korean launch as
a breach of a 2006 resolution barring its ballistic missile activity, demanded
the country not conduct any further launch and return to the six-party talks
aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program.
Ahead of its rocket launch, North Korea warned that any U.N. action -- whether a
presidential statement or even an attempt to consider one -- would rupture the
six-party disarmament talks, which also involve South Korea, the U.S., China,
Japan and Russia.
The North's satellite launch is part of its peaceful space development program,
and any foreign attempt to bar it would be a "blatant hostile act" that breaches
the spirit of mutual respect of the six-way talks, the North said.
"We would like to remind once again that there are not a few countries in the
world that launched satellites but the UNSC has never dealt with nor taken issue
with the satellite launches by other individual countries," the North's foreign
ministry said on March 26.
"The UNSC's discussion on the DPRK's projected satellite launch for peaceful
purposes itself ... will be regarded as a blatant hostile act against the DPRK,"
it said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name.
"The moment the September 19 joint statement is ignored due to such an act, the
six-party talks will come to an end," the ministry said, referring to a landmark
denuclearization accord reached in 2005.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, began disabling its major
nuclear facility in Yongbyon in late 2007, and the U.S. removed the North from
its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations in October last year under the six-party
framework aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear program.
The process stalled in December, however, due to a dispute over how to verify the
North's past nuclear activity.