North Korea on Saturday blasted the United States for causing military tension with China by meddling in Taiwan affairs.

Pak Myong-ho, the North’s vice foreign minister, also accused the US of trying to topple both Beijing and Pyongyang.

“This year alone, the US dispatched all kinds of battleships into the Taiwan Straits on the plea of ‘freedom of navigation’ whenever occasion called. Some time ago, it even mobilized a battleship of its ally only to escalate tension in the Taiwan Straits,” the North Korean official said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“This is an actual proof that the US is using Taiwan as a tool to put pressure on China and an outpost to overpower China in an emergency though it outwardly maintains ‘One China’ policy,” added the statement.

The statement came after US President Joe Biden reaffirmed US commitment to the defense of Taiwan from Chinese aggression in a town hall meeting held Thursday (US time).

The North Korean official argued that the Taiwan situation also reflected American intentions toward the North.

“It is a well-known fact that the US troops and its military bases in South Korea are in use to put pressure on China and that the huge forces of the US and its satellite states, which are being concentrated near Taiwan, can be committed to a military operation targeting the DPRK at any time,” said the statement, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea.

“This reality proves that the US is in its bid to stifle our country and China, both socialist countries, in order to hold its supremacy,” it added.

North Korea is ignoring US overtures for dialogue, saying it will come to the table when and if the US drops its hostility toward Pyongyang.

The North has stayed away from talks with the US since early 2019.

“It is in correlation with the situation on the Korean peninsula that we would continue to watch the US very closely in its stance to hold hegemony over the issue of Taiwan,” the North Korean diplomat said in his statement. (Yonhap)