The North Korean ambassador to the UN told reporters that a semi-state of war exists in the divided Korean peninsula. Pyongyang remains defiant in the face of threats of a nuclear first strike and will pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs as a deterrence measure against US and South Korea, according to top Pyongyang envoy So Se Pyong. Reuters reports: So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denounced the huge joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises taking place which he said were aimed at “decapitation of the supreme leadership of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)” and conquering Pyongyang. North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket in February. The South Korean military said on Friday that North Korea had fired a missile into the sea off its east coast. “If the United States continues, then we have to make the counter-measures also. So we have to develop, and we have to make more deterrence, nuclear deterrence,” So, who is also North Korea’s envoy to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, said in an interview with Reuters conducted in English. “Simultaneous policy is the policy of my country, and my [...]