Pyongyang condemns seized diplomatic package at US airport

By Park Sae-jin Posted : June 19, 2017, 09:26 Updated : June 19, 2017, 09:26

[Yonhap News Photo]


Pyongyang has warned of unspecified consequences unless the United States apologizes for making a "malicious provocation" to seize a diplomatic package from North Korean diplomats who were en route home last week after attending an international conference in New York.

North Korea is accusing Washington of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations under which a diplomatic package cannot be seized or seen without consent from the owner government. Three North Korean diplomats were reportedly involved.

The row came after Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student, returned to his Ohio home in a coma after spending 17 months in the North on charges of stealing a political propaganda poster. Pyongyang claimed Warmbier fell into a coma in March last year due to botulism and a sleeping pill. American doctors said the student had severe brain damage and was in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness".

Public anger has been growing in the United States over the student's comatose return, and President Donald Trump condemned it as a "truly terrible thing".

The North insisted its delegation was "literally mugged" at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on June 16 when more than 20 people including those from the US Department of Homeland Security and police took away a diplomatic package in an "illegal and heinous act of provocation".

The delegation  carrying a valid diplomatic courier certificate was in front of the boarding gate after attending the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement published Sunday by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

"As the diplomats vigorously resisted, they grabbed the diplomatic package using physical violence and made off," the spokesman said. 

Pyongyang regards it as "an intolerable act of infringement" on its sovereignty and "a malicious provocation", he said, adding the case serves as "a graphic account telling the world how reckless and despicable" the US  hostile policy toward Pyongyang has become.

The spokesman urged Washington's "good" explanation and official apology. "If the US fails to give its due response to our demand which is all too reasonable and fair enough, it will be totally responsible for all the consequences to be entailed."

Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com

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