North Korea seeks UN meeting on US-South Korea exercises

UNITED NATIONS — North Korea on yesterday warned that joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are pushing the situation on the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of a war" and asked for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.

In a letter to the council president, North Korea's UN Ambassador Jan Song Nam accused the United States of "creating the danger of war" with the annual drills which began Monday.

North Korea has threatened nuclear strikes in response to the exercises which it calls an invasion rehearsal.

This kind of fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual but the warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a US plan to place a high-tech missile defense system in South Korea.

Jan said in the letter that the situation on the Korean Peninsula "has become unprecedentedly instable (cq) due to the introduction of nuclear strategic bombers, anti-ballistic missile system of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and other strategic assets by the US to the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity."

He said the Security Council had previously "unjustifiably ignored" several requests by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea — the country's official name — to put the US-South Korean exercises on its agenda.

The ambassador warned that if the council again ignored the North's request to discuss the exercises, it will not only give up its responsibility for maintaining international peace and security but become "a political tool" of the United States.

"It is the consistent stand of the DPRK government to fundamentally terminate the danger of a nuclear war posed by the US by dint of the powerful nuclear deterrence and defend the regional and global peace," Jan said.

He also warned that "peace, security and relaxation of tension on the Korean Peninsula and in the region cannot be thinkable unless the US-South Korea aggressive joint military exercises are totally halted."