North Korea vows ‘powerful response’ after US approves arms sales to South

(FILES) North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump cross south of the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea, after Trump briefly stepped over to the northern side, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) on June 30, 2019. South Korea’s defence ministry said August 17, 2026 that its joint military exercise with the United States has started after President Donald Trump’s announcement it would be scaled back. Trump said he was “not happy” about US participation in the joint military exercises and is scaling back the drills aimed at deterring rival North Korea. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

North Korea condemned on Thursday US plans to supply Seoul with tactical missiles and fund human rights monitoring projects, vowing a “powerful response” to what Pyongyang described as Washington’s hostility towards it.

The US Department of State said on Friday it had approved the possible sale of AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II missiles and related equipment to South Korea at an estimated total cost of $125 million.

Pyongyang’s foreign ministry spokesperson, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said that “we cannot overlook the adverse effect of the US sale of its weapons to the ROK on the regional security environment”, referring to South Korea.

The statement also criticised Washington’s plans to provide millions of dollars for programmes related to human rights and the flow of information into North Korea.

The Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor announced last week an open competition for organisations to document rights abuses in North Korea to “challenge the DPRK’s information monopoly”, it said, referring to Pyongyang.

The North’s foreign ministry denounced “the persistence and sequence of the US hostile moves”, describing the latest measures as security threats that seek to “create instability in the social system of our state”.

North Korea “will make a serious, immediate and powerful response to the hostile acts”, the statement said.

US President Donald Trump has recently made a series of overtures to Pyongyang, including scaling back joint military drills with South Korea, but has so far received a cool response.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because their 1950-53 war, triggered by a North Korean attack, ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.