North Korea slams reports of weapons transfer to Russia

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) - North Korea on Friday slammed reports suggesting it was transferring weapons to Russia and said the development of its defense industry was meant for “war readiness.”

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a senior regime official, said “that the hostile forces are misleading public opinion with a false rumor that the weapon systems produced by the DPRK are ‘for export to Russia.’”

“The rumor about arms dealings between the DPRK and Russia, woven with mistaken view and fiction, is the most absurd paradox which is not worth making any evaluation or interpretation,” said Kim using DPRK or the Democratic Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea.

She said North Korean weapon systems “cannot be open to the public and, therefore, the possibility of export itself cannot be discussed.”

“We have no intention to export our military technical capabilities to any country or open them to the public,” she said.

The US and its allies accuse Pyongyang of transferring weapons, including missiles, to Moscow, which has been fighting a war with Ukraine over the past two years.

Kim said the urgent task for Pyongyang was “not to advertise or export something, but to make the war readiness and war deterrence of our army more perfect in quality and quantity, and to make the enemy unable to overcome the inferiority in military capability.”

“Tactical weapons, including multiple rocket launchers and missiles, shown by us recently are produced to discharge only one mission,” she said, adding: “We don't conceal the fact that such weapons will be used to prevent Seoul from inventing any idle thinking.”

Pyongyang has ended almost all military and economic agreements with South Korea with which it has been in perpetual war since the 1950s when the Korean war ended in an armistice.

“The more persistently the US resorts to different military acts of threatening the DPRK by instigating the ROK (South Korean) military vassals and the more desperately the ROK keeps clinging to its confrontation posture while boosting its reckless ‘boldness,’ in reliance on its master, the more thickly the dark clouds and shadow of curse would hang over their heads,” said Kim Yo Jong.

“We will more briskly conduct necessary activities in direct proportion to the undisguised and tricky political scheme by the hostile forces against our state,” she added.