UK Statement before the UN Security Council condemning North Korea’s ballistic missile launches

Thank you, Madam President, and I thank Assistant-Secretary-General Khiari for his briefing.

Once again, this Council is meeting to condemn ballistic missile launches by North Korea. This year alone, as we’ve heard, North Korea has launched 17 ballistic missiles – each in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. In the whole of 2021, North Korea conducted eight missile tests. So, let’s make no mistake about the escalation in tempo and missile capability that these 17 launches represent.

And, North Korea has been quite clear that it intends to continue to develop prohibited programmes, including Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles. These actions are a threat to regional peace and security.

So, the UK condemns unequivocally the ballistic missile launches by North Korea on 4 and 7 May.

We urge Council members to meet these violations with a firm and united response. We, again, call on all Member States to implement existing Security Council resolutions, in full. These are an essential part of the efforts to curtail the continued development of DPRK’s prohibited programmes. We fully support US-led efforts to update sanctions in the context of the evolving threat that North Korea’s actions present.

We are particularly concerned by North Korea’s cyber activity, through which it evades sanctions, and raises funds to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. This includes the recent cryptocurrency theft by North Korean cyber actors of $620 million dollars. The international community should work together to detect and mitigate such activity, and hold those committing malicious cyber activity to account.

The Council’s sanctions are not targeted at the people of North Korea, and we fully support the delivery of humanitarian support to the most vulnerable. We call on North Korea to allow humanitarian workers into the country to carry out an independent assessment of the humanitarian situation, and to allow aid to flow freely into the country. North Korea’s continued channelling of its resources into proscribed weapons programmes is responsible for worsening the dire humanitarian situation in North Korea.

Madam President,

We reaffirm our full commitment to non-proliferation obligations, and we call on North Korea to refrain from further provocations, to engage meaningfully in dialogue with the United States and to take concrete steps towards denuclearisation in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

I thank you.