Arab News Japan

TOKYO: North Korea has issued a statement to mark the end of what it calls a “tumultuous year” of 2023 that “marked the decline of US hegemony and a sense of change towards a new international order.”

The statement, issued by Chongryon Central Headquarters and the Unification Bureau, castigated the Israeli government, which, it said, was shaken by the impact of Hamas’s ‘Al-Aqsa Flood Operation’’ on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel.

The North accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “repeatedly committing insane mass killings in Gaza, making it the target of worldwide condemnation.”

“The United States, which persistently supported this, was isolated even in the United Nations Security Council and Western Europe’s unreasonable double standards were exposed. The Biden administration, which is leading the Indo-Pacific strategy, and the governments of Japan and South Korea, which were positioned as the cornerstones and axles of that strategy, are rapidly weakening domestically as well. The Biden administration’s three-pronged strategy on NATO, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific is collapsing.”

The statement said (North) Korea, China, and Russia had achieved stable political, economic, and military development, adding: “The BRICS and the Shanghai Treaty Organization, led by China and Russia, are expanding and strengthening, and the global presence and vitality of the Global South, which caters to them, is increasing day by day.”

The North highlighted the cooperation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the “China-Russia Joint Statement on International Relations and Global Sustainable Development,” seeing these factors leading to a new world order that can challenge the West and predicting that “the US and NATO will be defeated.”