Several countries continued to express their stands and suggestions on Thursday and Friday on the recent ballistic missile launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The DPRK on Thursday rejected the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) presidential statement condemning its latest test firing of a medium-range ballistic missile.
"We had already warned the United States that we would be closely monitoring its conduct," said a DPRK foreign ministry spokesman.
"The intermediate-range strategic ballistic rocket launching drill carried out by the Strategic Force of the KPA (Korean People's Army) this time is only a curtain raiser to the resolute countermeasures to be taken against the United States, as it responded to our warning by waging the belligerent Ulji Freedom Guardian joint drills," he said.
Defense chiefs of South Korea and the United States condemned the DPRK's recent missile launches during their bilateral talks in Washington, Seoul's defense ministry said Thursday.
South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo visited Washington to hold talks with his U.S. counterpart James Mattis at the Pentagon Wednesday morning (Washington time), according to the Ministry of National Defense.
Song and Mattis confirmed a firm South Korea-U.S. alliance, strongly denouncing the DPRK's ballistic missile launch on Tuesday and two other missile tests in July as reckless, provocative and destructive behaviors, the ministry said in a press release.
South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a press briefing that his government's basic position is the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized via a complete dismantlement of the DPRK's nuclear program.
The U.S. military on Thursday sent strategic bombers and stealth fighter jets over South Korea to take part in a joint bomb-dropping drill with the South Korean jet fighters in the country's northeastern region, local media reported, citing the South Korean air force.
The South Korean air force was quoted as saying that the joint air exercises were carried out to counter the DPRK's repeated ballistic missile launches and its nuclear development.
China said on Thursday that pressure and sanctions alone would not help fundamentally solve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks when asked to comment on plans of the United States, Japan and Britain to push for new UN sanctions against the DPRK, which would target the country's oil supply and laborers working abroad.
Hua reiterated that sanctions against the DPRK must happen within the framework of the UN Security Council and that China was opposed to any long-arm jurisdiction in accordance with one country's domestic law.
"Past experiences have proved that pressure and sanctions alone do not help fundamentally solve the problem," she said.
China has proposed a dual-track approach for advancing denuclearization and establishing a peace mechanism in parallel to meet both the ultimate goal of denuclearizing the peninsula and Pyongyang's security needs.
China also put forward the initiative of suspension-for-suspension, which calls on the DPRK to suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-South Korea military exercises.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday:" Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile program is misguided and futile."
He believes that the problems on the Korean Peninsula can only be solved through "a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions."
"Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road," he said.
The DPRK on Tuesday test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile from Pyongyang, which flew 2,700 km at an altitude of 550 km across northern Japan and hit its targeted waters in north Pacific.
