North Korea writes rare letter to House protesting new sanctions

by Dramelin 5:00 AM 0 comments

For weeks, North Korea has been in high-outrage mode because President Trump has threatened it with military action over its ballistic and nuclear weapons tests, and over its claims that it thwarted a CIA plot to assassinate leader Kim Jong Un with a bomb laced with chemical weapons.
On Friday, a North Korean parliamentary committee did a rare thing: it sent a letter of protest to the U.
House of Representatives over its new package of sanctions.
The committee denounced the sanctions as "the most heinous act against humanity that not only infringes upon the sacred sovereignty of the DPRK," referring to the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea, the country`s formal name, "but also arbitrarily violates universal principles of sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries which run through the United Nations Charter.
" The missive was published by North Korea`s state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Since North Korea and the United States have no formal diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication, it was not immediately clear how the letter was dispatched — if it was sent by mail, email or even how it was addressed.
The was also no immediate word on whether it had been received.
Pyongyang regularly uses pugnacious rhetoric to condemn moves by Washington to censure its activities.
A direct complaint to Congress is uncommon.
The parliamentary foreign affairs committee responsible for the letter had been mothballed for almost two decades.
It was recently revived by Kim, a move Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at South Korea`s Dongguk University, told the Associated Press could be interpreted as an attempt by Pyongyang to create a “window” for contacts with the outside world, especially with Seoul and Washington.
The House on May 4 voted overwhelmingly in favor of the sanctions that target North Korea`s shipping industry and its use of "slave labor" — goods produced by forced labor.
Before the sanctions can be implemented, they need be approved by the U.
Senate, a procedural point apparently lost on North Korea`s leadership.
House of Representatives should think twice," the foreign affairs committee of the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly said in its letter.
"As (the House) enacts more and more of these reckless hostile laws, the DPRK`s efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrents will gather greater pace, beyond anyone`s imagination.
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 to the brink of war, the CIA said this week it created a Korea Mission Center at its headquarters in Langley, Va.
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" North Korea`s Central Public Prosecutors Office released a separate statement Friday via state-run media in which it called for all "relevant authorities to immediately detect and arrest and hand over to the DPRK the masterminds of the hideous state-sponsored crime, accomplices and their followers.
" The statement appeared to suggest that North Korea believes South Korea and the U.
are harboring suspects related to the alleged assassination plot.
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