Warning comes as Trump calls latest sanctions only a ‘small step’ and ‘nothing compared’ to what will have to be done.
North Korea has said the United States will “suffer the greatest pain” over its role in bringing forth the latest sanctions on Pyongyang.
“The forthcoming measures … will make the US suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history, ” North Korea’s A mbassador to the UN Han Tae Song said on Tuesday.
His comments come after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a US-draft resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea.
The resolution is a water-down version of the original US proposal, but it does ban North Korea from importing all natural gas liquids and condensates, as well as bans all textile exports and prohibits all countries from authorising new work permits for North Korean workers.
Han rejected the resolution as “illegal and unlawful” and said Washington was “fired up for political, economic, and military confrontation”.
North Korea is “ready to use a form of ultimate means”, Han said.
On Wednesday, Pyongyang also called the sanctions a “heinous provocation aimed at depriving the DPRK of its legitimate right for self-defence and completely suffocating its state and people through full-scale economic blockade, ” according to a statement from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) .
DPRK stands for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The statement also said that the sanctions “verify that the road [North Korea] chose to go down was absolutely right and to strengthen its resolve to follow this road at a faster pace without the slightest diversion until this right to finish is over”.
Monday’s text is the ninth resolution unanimously adopted by the 15-member council since 2006 over North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programme.
It came in response to Pyongyang’s sixth and largest nuclear test on September 3, which it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb.
