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DPRK e-bulletin: “Ulji focus lens” exercises

Apologies for the delay in posting this and the following e-bulletin from the London embassy of the DPRK:

KPA Panmunjom Mission Terms “Ulji Focus Lens” War Action

DPRK flagPanmunjom, August 22 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People’s Army issued a statement Tuesday condemning the “Ulji Focus Lens” joint military exercises that started in south Korea on Monday at a time when the U.S. has become ever more undisguised in its hostile policy towards the DPRK and its moves to isolate and stifle the latter and the stand-off between the DPRK and the U.S. has reached an extreme phase. The statement said:

The KPA side can not but draw serious attention to the fact that these joint military exercises are timed to coincide with the largest-ever naval and air combined maneuvers staged in the waters off the Korean Peninsula and those exercises are staged after keeping a carrier strike flotilla on alert in waters near it.

We are taking a serious note of the fact that the above-said war maneuvers were launched at a time when the DPRK and the U.S. are still in the relations of hostility and belligerence and after the former declared a war against the latter in a recent resolution of the UN Security Council adopted by wirepulling its followers.

As clear to everyone, “Ulji Focus Lens” now underway in a terror-ridden atmosphere is obviously an undisguised military threat and blackmail against the DPRK and a war action going beyond the phraseology of violation of the Armistice Agreement (AA). No one can vouch that it would not go over to an actual war.

The KPA has already clarified more than once that a preemptive military action against other side is not a monopoly of the U.S. and the KPA side, therefore, reserves the right to undertake a preemptive action for self-defence against the enemy at a crucial time it deems necessary to defend itself, now that the two countries still remain in the above-mentioned relationship due to the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK.

The mission is authorized to state that the KPA side would not be bound to the AA in taking on its own initiative military measures for protecting the security and sovereignty of the country in the future, considering the ongoing war maneuvers as a war action declaring the AA null and void.