SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday its patience has limits and it could reverse steps to build trust with the United States, as it criticized a U.N. Security Council call for it to cease its weapons programs and denounced a U.S. missile test.
The five European members of the U.N. Security Council met on Tuesday to urge North Korea "to take concrete steps" towards giving up its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.
That call came days after North Korea said it test-fired a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, in what was the most provocative action by North Korea since it resumed dialogue with the United States in 2018.
North Korea, as part of its efforts to sustain that dialogue, which has included three meetings between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and U.S. President Donald Trump, has stopped testing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman, in a statement reported by its state KCNA news agency, raised questions about that restraint.
"There is a limit to our patience and there is no law that anything we have refrained from so far will continue indefinitely," the spokesman said.
The spokesman also denounced what he said was the U.N. Security Council's unfair taking up of the issue of North Korea's self-defense.
"The fact ... is prompting us to reconsider the crucial pre-emptive steps we have taken to build trust with the U.S."
The spokesman did not elaborate on what pre-emptive steps he was referring to, but North Korean state media and officials have referred to the halting of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests, and the return of remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War, as good-faith gestures to the United States, which it says have not been reciprocated.
The North Korean spokesman also referred to a U.S. Air Force test of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile this month.
The U.S. test was "clearly carried out in order to pressure us", the North Korean spokesman said.
