North Korea accuses Israel of being 'dictatorial force for aggression'

Pyongyang responded angrily to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks to the visiting Japanese premier last week.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‏. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‏.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
North Korea this past weekend accused Israel of "representing dictatorial forces for aggression that trample down the legitimate right of the Palestinian people."
Pyongyang responded angrily to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remark to the visiting Japanese premier last week in which the Israeli leader said that both Jerusalem and Tokyo face “formidable threats from nearby rogue states” – Israel from Iran and Japan from North Korea.
Iran, Netanyahu said, “cannot be allowed to travel the road taken by North Korea,” a path, which he said led to an agreement with Pyongyang in 1994 that “was widely celebrated as a historic breakthrough for nonproliferation, but in the end, that deal failed to prevent the dangerous proliferation that threatens all of east Asia today.”
Netanyahu reiterated his position that, until a deal is reached that dismantles Iran’s military capability, the international sanctions on Iran must be maintained.
“Both Iran and North Korea are governed by ruthless and extreme dictatorships, states that seek to bully and intimidate their neighbors, and in our case, to actually eradicate us from the face of the Earth,” he said. “Iran and North Korea have aggressive military nuclear programs and they are both developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, ballistic missiles.”
The North Korean regime issued a statement through the Korean Central News Agency taking Netanyahu to task for "provocative remarks hurting the DPRK's dignity and social system."
The statement said that Netanyahu's criticism of Pyongyang amounted to "rubbish," as did suggestions that the North Korean regime was working with Israel's enemies on missile and armament technology.
"In order to conceal its true colors as a harasser of Mideast peace the successive rulers of Israel have been apt to talk about the 'missile deal and nuclear cooperation' between the DPRK and Mideast countries," the statement read. "Not content with this, Israel recently went the lengths of hurting the DPRK's dignified social system."
"The people-centered Korean-style socialist system is the most advantageous system under which the people became masters of everything and it serves them and the DPRK's nuclear weapons are powerful deterrence to protect its social system."