North Korea says it will ‘make the US bitterly regret its strategy'

A combination photo shows a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) handout of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un released on May 10, 2016, and Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump posing for a photo after an interview with Reuters in his office in Trump Tower, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. (REUTERS/KCNA handout via Reuters)

President Trump’s new national security strategy unveiled this week has been condemned by North Korea as a “criminal document” that is “nothing but the proclamation of aggression aimed at holding sway over the world,” according to reports.

“The international society should remain vigilant against the maneuvers of the gang of Trump to invade and control (North Korea) by igniting a nuclear war at any cost in the Korean peninsula and clearly see through the ulterior motive behind its repeated talk of dialogue, designed to cover up its evil intention and mock the world,” The Express quoted a North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Friday.

The Express also quoted the spokesman as saying: “As the U.S. set its diplomatic and security policy at crushing us militarily and is publicly aiming a sword at us, we will make the US bitterly regret its strategy with our cannons.”

Trump's national security strategy document was released Monday and says that Washington has to confront the challenge posed by North Korea’s weapons programs.

“North Korea is ruled as a ruthless dictatorship without regard for human dignity," the document states. "For more than 25 years, it has pursued nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of every commitment it has made."

It adds, “Today, these missiles and weapons threaten the United States and our allies. ­The longer we ignore threats from countries determined to proliferate and develop weapons of mass destruction, the worse such threats become, and the fewer defensive options we have.”

Trump wrote in the forward that “We are rallying the world against the rogue regime in North Korea.”

The Foreign Ministry spokesman defended North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons as necessary “to defend our sovereignty and rights to existence and development in the face of ever increased hostile moves and nuclear threats and blackmail of the U.S.”