North Korea on Monday slammed multilateral monitoring activities on U.N. sanctions against the North, describing such activities as "illegal" without any connection to the United Nations. North Korea's permanent mission to the U.N. made the argument in a press statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency on a U.S. plan to hold a briefing at the U.N. headquarters about a report of the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT). MSMT was set up in 2024, led by South Korea and the United States, as a multilateral mechanism to monitor and report violations of U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea. The U.S. Department of State was to hold a briefing Monday (U.S. time) on an MSMT report issued in October last year, which found North Korea stole about $2.84 billion worth of virtual assets between early 2024 and September 2025. "What should be questioned and openly discussed in the U.N. as the most important pending issue is the hideous criminal act of the U.S.," the statement claimed, calling the MSMT an "illegal ghost organization that has no connection with the U.N. in