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| State Department Press Secretary Ned Price speaking during a daily press briefing at the state department in Washington, Feb. 15. Yonhap |
The United States considers and is dealing with North Korea issues with the same level of urgency as all other challenges facing the country and its allies, a state department spokesperson said Wednesday.
The spokesperson, Ned Price, insisted the U.S. simply did not have the "luxury of being able to prioritize" the challenges.
"All of these issues are important," Price told a daily press briefing.
"All of these same issues are made of the same plot. All of these challenges that we face, very different challenges that we face from the PRC (People's Republic of China), from Iran, from Russia, from the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), in some ways, this all boils down to the rules-based order," added Price, referring to China and North Korea by their official names.
The department spokesperson was reacting to a question whether the U.S. takes the threat posed by North Korea as serious as other challenges, given that President Joe Biden had failed to mention the North Korea issue in his State of the Union Address delivered last week.
"Whether it's Russia's unprovoked, brutal aggression against Ukraine, whether it is the PRC's attempts to change or undermine the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, whether it is Iran's provision of support to malign actors that in turn destabilize the Middle East or whether it's the DPRK's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, all of these, in different ways, pose a challenge to the rules-based order," said Price.
"The United States and countries around the world are standing up for that rules-based order. It's what we are doing in Ukraine. It's what we are doing in the context of the DPRK," he added.
When asked about Japan's proposed release of potentially radiation-contaminated water from its Fukushima nuclear power plant, the department spokesperson said Tokyo has been transparent in its decision-making process.
"We strongly support the nuclear safety and security standards championed by the International Atomic Energy Agency or the IAEA, and we welcome Japan's continued openness and close coordination with the international community as Japan prepares to disperse the treated water in a manner that appears to be in line with the internationally accepted nuclear safety standards," he said. (Yonhap)
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