This article was first published on November 15, prior to the latest December UN Security Council resolution against the DPRK, which was adopted unanimously, with the support of Russia and China.

The situation with North Korea is terrifying – I see the stealthy build-up of pressure on the Security Council, similar to that preceding the Iraq and Libya invasions. The Russian-China veto prevented an attack by the UN on Syria, but Russia and China are not vetoing these vicious sanctions on North Korea, and permitting this incredibly provocative US-ROK military surrounding the DPRK. What deals are being made?

On October 13, the DPRK sent another emergency letter to United Nations Secretary-General Guterres; this was the third letter sent to the UN since November 20, three letters in 23 days attempting to alert the United Nations to the crisis situation in Northeast Asia jeopardizing International Peace and Security, a crisis that could precipitate nuclear war at any moment. All three letters have been ignored, raising alarming questions about the UN’s commitment to “save humanity from the scourge of war.

Any attempt to accuse the DPRK of “provocation”is flagrant prevarication, as the provocations, and threats to the survival of North Korea described in this appeal to the Secretary-General reveal the US-south Korean preparation for imminent attack and obliteration of North Korea.

Ambassador Ja Song Nam stated:

“I write to you with respect to the worst ever situation prevailing in and around the Korean peninsula, which is making it impossible to predict when nuclear war breaks out due to the US nuclear war equipment of unprecedentedly large scale being massively deployed taking up a strike posture. The United States, based on the deployment of three nuclear powered aircraft carrier strike groups in the sub-region, is holding another joint military exercise with south Korea, involving different types of destroyers and submarines, beginning from November 11, 2017. The U.S. is reactivating….. nuclear capable strategic bomber B-52….and is maintaining a surprise strike posture with frequent flight of B-1B and B-2 formations to the air space of south Korea….The US flung the words of “total destruction”of a sovereign state at the UN General Assembly, the world largest official forum of diplomacy and is now running amok for war exercises by introducing nuclear war equipment in and around the Korean peninsula, thereby proving that the US itself is the major offender of the escalation of tension and undermining of the peace…..Despite this fact, the UN Security Council, whose mission is to ensure the world peace and security, keeps turning a blind eye to the nuclear war exercises of the United States who is hell bent on bringing a catastrophic disaster to humanity, thereby giving rise to a serious concern on the double standard of the UN Security Council.”

It defies logic and sanity that the DPRK, which, between 1950-1953, suffered the slaughter of more than 3 million of its citizens by US and ROK soldiers guilty of crimes against humanity, and which is attempting to protect itself from another comparable or worse slaughter, is being viciously subjected to collective punishment by UN Security Council sanctions, condemning the people of the DPRK to agonizing deaths from starvation and disease, while forced to endure the psychological torture of an encirclement by US-ROK nuclear weapons poised to exterminate their entire people.

The perpetrator of this threatened genocide is a nuclear power which has violated articles 1 and 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and should be held accountable for these violations, and itself sanctioned. But at the United Nations the de facto law is “might is right,” and “money talks.”

The United Nations has lost its moral authority, and is accurately condemned for almost complete lack of impartiality, deserving of its pejorative designation as an annex of the US Pentagon. It is now also fair to question whether the UN will survive this ignominy, and uphold its purpose: to save humanity from the scourge of war.” Nicholas Kristof’s excellent November 4 article “Slouching toward war in North Korea” tells a grim picture of the deadly price of complacency and double standards. Unless the UN Secretary-General has the courage to restore the UN’s impartiality, the people of North Korea may be annihilated, along with all of humanity.

Carla Stea is Global Research’s Correspondent at United Nations headquarters, New York.

Featured image is from UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré.