North Korea warns US of ‘terrifying price’ over nuke tensions

North Korea warns the United States that it will pay a “terrifying price” if the Korean Peninsula sinks into deeper tensions, stepping up its rhetoric hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry blasted Pyongyang for its nuclear program.

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho tells a regional security conference in Laos that his country is ready to face any sanctions, and was mindful of all possible sanctions when it took the “inevitable strategic decision” to develop nuclear weapons to counter the “never-ending nuclear blackmails of the US.”

“We are ready to show that even a [powerful] country will surely not be safe if it tries to torment and harm a small country,” Ri says, according to the text of his speech released to the media. “The United States will have to pay dearly a terrifying price.”

His comments come after Kerry tells the same conference, known as the ASEAN Regional Forum, that North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons — when the world is trying to rid itself of them — is “very provocative and deeply concerning.”

Ri strikes a slightly conciliatory tone in later comments to reporters, published by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, saying: “As a responsible nuclear state, we will not carelessly use our nuclear weapons unless we come to face an actual threat, [or] a threat of invasion from another nuclear state.”

He adds that North Korea’s decision on conducting another nuclear test will “entirely hinge on the United States’s attitude.”

— AP