N. Korea slams France for its planned surveillance of illicit maritime activities

A330 multi-role tanker transport of France takes off at an air base in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, July 25, in this photo released by the South Korean Air Force. Newsis

A North Korean official denounced France on Friday over its plan to monitor North Korea's possible illicit maritime activities, calling it an "extremely foolish act of plunging itself into a bottomless pit."

Ryu Kyong-chol, a researcher at Pyongyang's Korea-Europe Association, made the criticism in response to Japan's announcement that France will engage in monitoring and surveillance of illicit maritime activities this month, including ship-to-ship transfers by North Korean-flagged vessels, by using an aircraft from a U.S. airbase on Okinawa.

"Such irresponsible behavior of France to interfere in the situation of the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia, where interests of regional powers are inextricably intertwined, is no more than an extremely foolish act of plunging itself into a bottomless pit," Ryu said in the English-language article carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

France, one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has engaged in the monitoring and surveillance activities in waters near the Korean Peninsula every year since 2019 to help implement the Security Council sanctions resolutions on North Korea.

North Korea is banned from transporting fuel and other commodities via ships under the sanctions imposed in response to its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang is believed to have engaged in constant illicit ship-to-ship transfers to evade sanctions.

Mu Bong 1, a North Korean oil tanker with a record of sanction violations, was briefly spotted in waters east of the Chinese Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan on Monday, the Voice of America (VOA) reported, spawning suspicion of illicit maritime activities by Pyongyang.

The researcher warned that France should immediately refrain from what he called "anachronistic gunboat diplomacy," saying the situation on the Korean Peninsula is "inching close to the brink of a thermo-nuclear war" that will be made "more complicated and dangerous."

In August, Pyongyang denounced France for holding its first combined air exercise with South Korea, decrying it as an "undisguised military provocation" threatening the North's security. (Yonhap)