North Korea expressed regret over the joint statement adopted by Korea and the European Union (EU) during President Lee Jae-myung's tour of Europe.
North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 13th said through a '10th Bureau' Spokesperson's statement, "Whatever the rulers in Seoul say and do is a challenge to us, and our principle of treating Korea as a thoroughly hostile state is immutable," adding this.
The 10th Bureau is an organization newly established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after North Korea severed inter-Korean relations and redefined them as an "antagonistic two-state relationship," not a partnership, to take exclusive charge of affairs related to the Republic of Korea.
The Spokesperson in particular expressed strong displeasure with the statement for not recognizing North Korea as a legitimate nuclear-armed state and for branding its military exchanges with Russia as illegal.
The Spokesperson stressed, "This is a clear infringement of our state's sovereignty and a grave hostile act, tantamount to throwing away with their own hands the camouflage signboards such as 'respect for the system' and 'non-pursuit of hostile acts' that they have harped on until their tongues wore out."
The Spokesperson went on to note that, through this joint statement, President Lee completely cast off the hypocritical mask of peace he had worn. The Spokesperson said, "With this confrontation declaration, the Korean ruler proved the reality that there can be no 'peaceful coexistence' between Choson (North and South) and that it can only be a permanently hostile two-state relationship," adding, "The Korean ruler's display of characteristic 'candor' shows there is no longer any face to stage further farces such as a 'peace declaration' or a 'peaceful two-state theory.'"
Furthermore, the Spokesperson escalated the disparagement toward Korea, calling it the United States' cat's-paw and a "dagger" seeking to invade the Asian continent. The explanation was that "it was an inevitable outcome that the 'dagger' favored by the United States ripped through the silk wrapper called 'peace' and stuck out."
Earlier, on the 10th in Brussels, Belgium, President Lee Jae-myung held a summit with European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. At the time, the two sides strongly condemned the military alignment between North Korea and Russia, while issuing a joint statement making clear that North Korea would never obtain the status of a nuclear-armed state within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).