US hostile rhetoric on DPRK-Russia ties reflects hegemonic mentality: DPRK vice FM

SEOUL - A senior diplomat of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) rebuked the United States on Sunday for its hostile rhetoric toward DPRK-Russia relations through a press statement by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Im Chon-il, vice minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, lashed out at the United States for its hostility toward the development of DPRK-Russia relations and its rhetoric that the bilateral cooperation between the two countries poses a threat to global peace and security.

The US rhetoric is "a vivid expression of the US hegemony-oriented way of thinking based on the Cold War-style confrontation logic," according to the statement.

The statement also condemned the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral military alliance and NATO, labeling both of them "cancer-like entities jeopardizing the international order based on the purpose and the principle of the UN (United Nations) Charter and posing a grave threat to global peace and security."

The DPRK will further develop the traditional relations of friendship and cooperation with Russia and other independent sovereign countries, in deterrence against the military threat, provocation and high-handed and arbitrary practices by the imperialists and in firm defense of the peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of the world, the statement added.