North Korea on Saturday condemned a port visit by a US aircraft carrier to the South as a "reckless" act of provocation following proposals by Pyongyang to ease cross-border tensions. The USS George Washington arrived in the southern port of Busan on Friday for joint military exercises starting next week.
A spokesman of the Policy Department of the North's National Defence Commission (NDC) said the visit was "little short of its 'gunboat diplomacy' in the last century" and "in defiance" of the North's overtures. "The US should properly understand that the more persistently it resorts to reckless nuclear blackmail and threat, the further the DPRK (North Korea) will bolster up its cutting edge nuclear force for self-defence", the spokesman was quoted as saying by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
He said the exercises, taking place after the North reached out last week, were an "open challenge" to its efforts. "Whenever there was a sign of improving the north-south relations and detente on the peninsula, the US resorted to sinister interference and obstructions", he said in reference to the upcoming drills.