North Korea warns US of 'greatest pain', rejects sanctions

North Korea on Tuesday rejected a UN Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions and said the United States would soon face the “greatest pain” it had ever experienced.

The Security Council unanimously stepped up sanctions against North Korea on Monday over the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test, imposing a ban on its textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.

“My delegation condemns in the strongest terms and categorically rejects the latest illegal and unlawful UN Security Council resolution,” Pyongyang’s ambassador, Han Tae Song, told the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

Han accused the US administration of being “fired up for political, economic, and military confrontation,” and of being “obsessed with the wild game of reversing the DPRK’s development of nuclear force which has already reached the completion phase”.

North Korea was condemned globally for its latest nuclear test on September 3, which it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is “ready to use a form of ultimate means”, Han said without elaborating.

“The forthcoming measures by DPRK will make the US suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history,” he said.

US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood took the floor to say that the Security Council resolution “frankly sent a very clear and unambiguous message to the regime that the international community is tired, is no longer willing to put up provocative behaviour from this regime”.

“My hope is the regime will hear the message loud and clear and it will choose a different path,” Wood said.

“We call on all countries to vigorously implement these new sanctions and all other existing sanctions,” he added.