PYONGYANG, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday blasted the U.S. administration for pressurizing Pyongyang with threatening remarks when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Asia recently.
Tillerson said Friday at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all options were on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue, including diplomatic, security and economic measures.
Tillerson said that a so-called "strategic patience" policy toward the DPRK has ended, referring to the U.S. foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearization.
The top U.S. diplomat indicated a need for tougher U.N. Security Council sanctions on the DPRK's nuclear program and other weapons of mass destruction.
"The DPRK has the will and capability to fully respond to any war the U.S. would like to ignite," said an unnamed spokesman for the DPRK foreign ministry in response to those remarks in a statement released by the state-run news agency KCNA.
"What matters is that neither Obama nor Tillerson knows the reason why the DPRK had to have access to nuclear weapons and why it is dynamically bolstering up the nuclear force," said the spokesman.
He called the nuclear weapons of the DPRK "treasured sword of justice" and the "most reliable war deterrence to defend the socialist motherland and the life of its people."
Tillerson began Wednesday his first three-nation Asian tour that took him to Japan, South Korea and China.
