U.S. Hit for Seeking to Wage Joint Military Drill against DPRK

Pyongyang, July 16 (KCNA) -- A spokesperson for the DPRK Foreign Ministry made public the following press statement on Tuesday:

The United States and south Korea are going to defiantly conduct a joint military exercise "Alliance 19-2" targeting us in August.

Outwardly, the U.S. is trumpeting that this exercise is a simulation to verify whether the south Korean army is capable of taking over wartime operational control. But, it is crystal clear that it is an actual drill and a rehearsal of war aimed at militarily occupying our Republic by surprise attack and rapid dispatch of large-scale reinforcements under the cloak of "containment" and "counter-offensive" in time of emergency.

The suspension of joint military exercises is what President Trump, commander-in-chief of the U.S., personally committed to at the DPRK-U.S. summit talks in Singapore under the eyes of the whole world and reaffirmed at the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting in Panmunjom, where our Foreign Minister and the U.S. Secretary of State were also present.

Our discontinuation of the nuclear and ICBM tests and the U.S. suspension of joint military exercises are, to all its intents and purposes, commitments made to improve bilateral relations. They are not a legal document inscribed on a paper.

In order to implement the DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement, we already took crucial steps, followed by the humanitarian measures without any precondition.

Less than a month now since the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting in Panmunjom, the U.S. is going to resume joint military exercise which it directly committed to suspend at the highest level.

This is clearly a breach of the main spirit of June 12 DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement and an undisguised pressure upon us.

We are viewing this matter with vigilance.

We really have many things to say about the facts that the U.S., together with Japan, south Korea and other countries, staged the "Proliferation Security Initiative" exercise targeting our country in early July and continues to bring highly sophisticated war equipment into south Korea.

With the U.S. unilaterally reneging on its commitments, we are gradually losing our justifications to follow through on the commitments we made with the U.S. as well.

I wonder whether there would be such obligation or law that one side alone has to continue to cling to when it is clear that a unilateral adherence would not bring any gains because the other side neither honors nor minds them. -0-