N.Korea slams S. Korean missile test

North Korea blasted South Korea on Saturday for test-firing a missile capable of hitting anywhere in the communist country, saying that Seoul will no longer be justified to blame it for launching rockets

 In a report carried by the state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Seoul, a spokesman for the North Korean Army's Strategic Force said it was "a great irony" that South Korea is celebrating a successful test-fire of a ballistic missile when it has been denouncing the North's missile launches.

"Now the South Korean puppet forces will have no face to find fault with the DPRK over its justifiable rocket launches and its exercise of the right to self-defense any longer no matter how desperately they may wag their tongues," the spokesman was quoted as saying, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

"It was none other than the South Korean puppet forces which worked more desperately than any others in a bid to slap fresh 'sanctions' against the DPRK while labeling the launching drills as a 'violation of the UN resolutions' and a 'provocation," the spokesman said.

On Friday, South Korea's defense dinistry said that it had successfully tested a ballistic missile with a range of 500 kilometers and a payload of 1 ton at a firing range in Taean, South Chungcheong Province, and that it will be deployed next year. The test was conducted on March 23, it added.

North Korea said it was "a comedy" that South Korea announced the result of the test several days after it took place and that it was Seoul's attempt to assuage the public anger over the country's "poor military reaction" during the North's live-fire artillery drill in the Yellow Sea on March 31.

Referring to South Korea's recovery of two drones that crashed near the inter-Korean border in the recent past, the North Korean spokesman said that it further tarnished the image of the South Korean military. After investigation, South Korea had concluded that the drones were flown by North Korea.

The North Korean official, however, didn't specify whether the drones did, in fact, belong to Pyongyang. (Yonhap)