Kim Hyong Hun, vice-minister of Public Health, told KCNA:

The DPRK's possession of powerful nuclear force is a fair and legitimate self-defensive measure to protect its sovereignty and national right to existence from the high-handed and arbitrary practices of the U.S. which has posed nuclear threat to the DPRK for over half a century. Nevertheless, the U.S. and its servile forces cooked up illegal UN "sanctions resolution", which makes all the people in the DPRK firmly determined to defend their sovereignty and dignity.

Our people consider "sanctions resolution" nothing, but a scrap of wastepaper.

Sin Kyong Chol, a department director of the Ministry of Coal Industry, said:

It is high time to teach the U.S. and its minions how dear price they should have to pay for hurting our inviolable sovereignty and dignity.

Sovereignty is our life and soul and for nothing it can be bartered.

The U.S. and its stooges miscalculate that their sanction and pressure could terrify our people. It is our fixed will that a glorious day dedicated to defending the independent dignity is thousand-fold worthier than a slavish life.

Jo Myong Il, an official of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, said:

Neither formidable enemy nor harsher sanction can menace our people strong in independent stand.

We will, as ever, hold faster to the banner of self-reliance and self-development to frustrate the enemy's vicious challenge and speed up the building of a socialist thriving nation with the might of single-hearted unity and Songun.