Kim Jong Un: North Korea to retaliate against US for UN sanctions

Kim Jong Un has vowed to take action against the United States for the recently-imposed UN sanctions against North Korea. 

The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Sunday that the reclusive state's leader made his claims at at meeting in Pyongyang on Saturday, just a week after North Korea announced it would test a nuclear missile, the New York Times reported. 

“At the consultative meeting, Kim Jong-un expressed the firm resolution to take substantial and high-profile important state measures in view of the prevailing situation,” KCNA reported. “He advanced specific tasks to the officials concerned.”

Last week, the UN Security Council — including Korean ally China — condemned North Korea's missile test in December, and demanded that Kim Jong Un's regime desist from its plans for nuclear testing or face "significant action," the South China Morning Post reported. 

North Korea will most likely be prepared to test a weapon in “a few weeks or less," according to analysis of recent satellite photos by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. 

It remains unknown if they have the capability to build nuclear warheads able to mount on a long-range missile, and US officials have stressed caution, saying that North Korea knows their nuclear sites are being monitored by the United States and they may try to deceive them, according to Bloomberg.

In contrast to his father Kim Jong Il, who tended to avoid confrontation with the outside world, Un's moves seem designed to prove that "he is a young yet powerful leader both domestically and internationally," Chin Hee-gwan, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Inje University, told the Associated Press. 

North Korea has said the military threat from the US is the key reason behind its push to test nuclear weapons, the AP reported. 

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