© YonhapNorth Korea's External Economic Affairs Minister Kim Yong-jae attends a session at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, on April 26, 2019.
"Let them impose sanctions, for a hundred, or thousand years, if they wish -- we cannot care less and are barely affected by them," North Korea's External Economic Affairs Minister Kim Yong-jae told Yonhap News Agency.
He was attending the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
The minister's remarks come a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held his first summit talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian port city of Vladivostok. Leader Kim was set to return home Friday afternoon.
"These people must not do things the way they're doing them now, and have got to change their way," he said.
Asked about whether the sanctions have deprived the North's economy of energy resources, the minister bluntly said there has been "no impact."
"Energy and electricity output has jumped from last year. Even South Korea thinks we're badly in need of the sanctions (relief), but it does not bother us," he said.
The minister then blasted Seoul for walking on eggshells around Washington and continuing its joint military drills with its ally.
"(The South) just changed the name (of the drills) and carried out the exercise," referring to the recent joint air force drills, which North Korean media have described as an act of "perfidy" endangering inter-Korean relations.
He slammed Seoul for not complying with the inter-Korean military agreement the two sides signed in September last year under a broader scheme to end all hostile acts against each other.
"We should act in line with what we, between the North and South, have agreed to, and take responsibility for any problem that arises from within the agreement," the minister added.
Comment: Even if Kim is exaggerating, and the sanctions are having an impact, it still proves the point: sanctions don't work. They only thing they achieve is harming the lives of ordinary people. But the people themselves, and especially their leaders, just double down in their opposition to the sanctioning bodies. It's the same in Venezuela, Iran, Russia... It'll be a long time before the United States learns that you can't just beat a country into submission and expect them to love you. Until that point, that is what they'll continue to do.