"The great success of the second launch of the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile came as a powerful demonstration of the revolutionary faith of our party and people, who are ready to strike until the American imperialists stop their anachronistic hostile policies towards [North] Korea, kneel down and beg for forgiveness for all the sufferings they inflicted on our nation," Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of North Korea reported in response to the criticism of the second successful launch of the country's Hwasong-14 missile.
According to South Korean Yonhap news agency, on Sunday, the North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a statement hailing its late-night ICBM test on Friday as a "show of its military capability that Washington dares not ignore."
"If the United States sticks to its military adventurism against us and super-intensive sanctions schemes, we will respond with a stern action of justice as we have already declared," a ministry spokesperson was quoted by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.
Yonhap also quoted Rodong Sinmun as saying that North Korea has developed the ICBM "to cope with the US threat of invasion and sanctions."
"The US left no stone unturned to stifle the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by force," the newspaper said in a commentary carried by the KCNA.
"The desperate moves of the US imperialists will only redouble the will of the Korean army and people to dynamically accelerate the bolstering of defense capabilities and the building of an economic power while holding fast to the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts," it added.
While the US, South Korea and Japan believe that North Korea launched an ICBM, the Russian Defense Ministry challenged their data, saying that based on technical characteristics of the missile, it was medium-range.
