By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
North Korea has launched a verbal assault on U.S. President Barack Obama for his government's allegedly peddling of influence in the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of its rocket launch early last month.
The North also stood firm on its nuclear program, calling it a critical measure to assure its security in an era of what it called ``unilateralism.''
In an editorial in its official Nodong Sinmun newspaper Tuesday, the North criticized General Walter Sharp for his remark that the United States would keep South Korea under its nuclear umbrella after 2012 when it transfers wartime operational control of South Korean forces to Seoul. Sharp serves as commander of the U.S. Forces in South Korea.
``The U.S. urges us to dismantle the nuclear program, but ironically it promises South Korea to offer its nuclear umbrella. This means that they force us to disarm and give in,'' it said.
In a further criticism, the North's foreign ministry spokesman said the United States tried to repress countries that disagreed with it.
With the accusations, the North, which once expressed hope of improving relations with the United States even before Obama took office last January, seems to have hardened its stance toward the U.S. government.
During the presidential campaign last year, Obama said that he would be willing to sit down one-on-one with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il if that was what it took to resolve the North Korean nuclear program.
However, since Obama's inauguration, Washington-Pyongyang relations have not gone the way the North intended.
In February, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to push for ``verifiable and complete'' dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program when she visited South Korea.
U.S.- North Korea relations have become worse since the North launched a long-range rocket on April 5.
President Obama called it ``a provocative act.''
The U.N. Security Council condemned the launch, saying it was an unacceptable violation of international law, and vowed tougher sanctions against the North.
Pyongyang accused the U.S. government of allegedly flexing its muscles in the U.N. Security Council decision-making on North Korea. The North said there were few differences between the Obama administration and his predecessor Bush, as both sought a go-it-alone strategy.
The North's foreign ministry spokesman said, ``Only those who are capable of defending themselves can survive and that is the reality facing us in the current international system. Early on North Korea had chosen strengthening our nuclear deterrence, and it was the right decision to make.''
Meanwhile, Oh Joon, chief of the Office of Multilateral Global and Legal Affairs of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the North's nuclear program posed a threat to international efforts for non-proliferation.
In a speech to the preparatory session for the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Oh stressed the need to strengthen the NPT to be a more effective tool in preventing a nuclear threat.