The United States and partners South Korea and Japan clashed with China and Russia over North Korea’s fresh satellite and ballistic missile launches and the dangers of using nuclear weapons that have escalated uncertainties in northeast Asia. The scene was a crisis open meeting of the U.N. Security Council called after North Korea’s failed takeoff of a military reconnaissance satellite on May 27 and other takeoffs using ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Since the commencement of 2022, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the North’s official name – has projected over 100 missiles using this banned technology as it has extended its nuclear weapons program. In response, the U.S. and its partners have carried out an increasing number of military exercises.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari informed the council meeting saying sovereign nations have the right to benefit from peaceful space actions– but the DPRK is expressly forbidden from conducting launches utilising ballistic missile technology and its continuing breaches undermine global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation treaties. “We remain deeply concerned about rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” Khiari stated. “There is a need for practical steps to reduce tensions, reverse the destructive dynamic, and create space to explore diplomatic avenues.”

North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song urged that its satellite launches – and it had a thriving one last November – are “the legitimate and versatile right of a sovereign state” under international law and the Outer Space Treaty. He emphasised that reconnaissance satellites are not only required to strengthen its self-defence capabilities but also to protect its sovereignty.

Kim informed the Security Council that the “massive deployment of strategic acquisitions and aggressive war exercises” by the United States on the Korean Peninsula and in the territory have broken all records and destroyed the military balance.

This has shifted the Korean Peninsula “into the most fragile zone in the world, fraught with the threat of an outbreak of war,” he stated, claiming that joint military exercises since the start of the year are “a U.S.-led nuclear war rehearsal.” The DPRK ambassador expressed the Security Council shouldn’t waste time discussing the legitimate rights of a sovereign state, but should direct its concentration to putting an immediate stop to the killing of civilians in Gaza, “which continues unabated under U.S. patronage.”

South Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Joonkook Hwang stated it should be his country – not the DPRK – that should assert the right to self-defence. He expressed that DPRK’s nuclear policy and its rhetoric “are getting increasingly fierce and hostile, and Pyongyang no longer considers its nuclear arsenal as just a barrier against the United States, “but instead as a means to strike my country.” He mentioned DPRK leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, expressing two weeks ago that the only purpose of their tactical nuclear weapons “is to teach a lesson to Seoul.”

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood advised the Security Council to condemn the DPRK’s launches and hold it responsible for violating U.N. sanctions. “But two council members, China and Russia, continuously thwart the Security Council from speaking against the DPRK’s behaviour with one voice and makes us all less secure,” he said. Wood also blamed the DPRK for unlawfully transmitting dozens of ballistic missiles and over 11,000 receptacles of munitions to Russia to aid its fight against Ukraine, “prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

He abandoned as “groundless” and disingenuous” shares by the DPRK and its supporters on the council that its missile takeoffs are a response to U.S.-led military exercises. Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva disputed that “one of the key catalysts for the growing pressures in the region has been and remains the build-up of military action by the U.S. and its allies.” U.S.-led military exercises against the DPRK and numerous other hostile actions with a threatening military element “are provoking countermeasures from North Korea, which is pushed to take action to strengthen its national defence capacity,” she said.

Evstogneeva declared, “The unstable position around the Korean Peninsula is of benefit to Washington, which continues to confidently and deliberately follow the path of confrontation instead of dialogue.” She also overlooked claims that Russia is engaging in unlawful military and technical collaboration with the DPRK as “absolutely unfounded.”