DPRK upset over UN's inaction on "provocative" U.S.-South Korea war games

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday voiced its frustration over the UN Security Council's (UNSC) failure to take up its request for an emergency meeting on what it said "gangster-like" joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.

Ambassador Ri Tong Il, the deputy permanent representative of the DPRK, told reporters that the inaction sends the "wrong message to the international community by keeping silent (that) the Security Council is encouraging the United States to continue this kind of very provocative, very aggressive, very dangerous, joint military exercises against the DPRK."

He repeated oft-heard accusations against Washington of being the "root cause" of tensions between the DPRK and South Korea.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, which kicked off on Aug. 18 and continues through Aug. 29, prompted strong response from the DPRK, which called the U.S.-South Korean joint military drill "another undisguised nuclear threat and blackmail" in a statement.

Ri said a formal letter was sent Aug. 18 to the council, "the very same day when the U.S. opened this Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises and we have not yet received any single word of formal letter what reaction they are giving."

However, Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the council's president, indicated to reporters that the panel would not take the subject up.

The United States, as one of the five veto-wielding members of the panel of 15, would be able to scuttle any such request.

"This is the UNSC of today we are facing and the failure by the UNSC to open an emergency meeting ... clearly indicates this is because of the coercive pressure from the United States," Ri said. "It is also showing the rampant infringement upon the purposes and principles reflected in the UN Charter."

"If the UNSC has a mandate, still, for securing world peace and security of the world, it should take action toward "removing the cancer-like existence of these very dangerous joint military exercises of U.S. and South Korea from the Korean Peninsula," he said.