North Korea rebukes Seoul, EU over rejection of its nuclear status

AI핵심 요약

• ·Pyongyang says Seoul has shed its 'mask of peace' North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (KCTV via Yonhap) North Korea has slammed the joint statement adopted last week by South Korea and the European Union, and reiterating its commitment to nuclear armament.
• ·Seoul, in response, reiterated its commitment to pursuing peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula from a long-term perspective.
• ·In a statement released Saturday, a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry's 10th Bureau said Seoul had discarded its "mask of peace" by endorsing language condemning North Korea's military cooperation with Russia and rejecting its status as a nuclear weapons state.
• ·"Whatever words or actions South Korean authorities take, they constitute a challenge against us," the bureau's spokesperson said, adding that Pyongyang's principle of treating South Korea as a hostile state would remain unchanged.
• ·The 10th Bureau is a North Korean Foreign Ministry unit handling inter-Korean affairs, succeeding the United Front Department, Pyongyang’s former key agency for South Korea-related operations.