North Korea accuses US of war declaration after Kim Jong Un sanctions

A North Korean diplomat has accused the United States of effectively "declaring war" against the country after placing sanctions against leader Kim Jong Un regarding human rights abuses.

Han Song Ryol, the director general of the US affiairs department in Pyongyang made the accusation on Thursday, saying that Washnington had "crossed the red line" interms of the relations between the two states.

"The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea."

"The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown. We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war," said Han Song Ryol.

The announcement from the US on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un had been personally sanctioned

North Korea's relations with its southern neighbours has long been a fractious one, with the US and South Korea regularly conducting military exercises close to the demilitarised zone on the border.

The state had been previously sanctioned on various occasions for failing to comply with international restrictions with its nuclear weapons programme, but the announcement from the US on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un had been personally sanctioned.

‘It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind,’ he said.

Pyongyang has denied claims that were put forward by a United Nations report that human rights abuses were rife in the country, giving the example of the current discontent in the US with regards to police shootings of black citizens as evidence that all is not right in their country.

The diplomat warned of the repercussions should a planned exercise in the Korean Peninsula go ahead this August.

"We are all prepared for war, and we are all prepared for peace," he said. "If the United States forces those kinds of large-scale exercises in August, then the situation caused by that will be the responsibility of the United States."