North Korea yesterday said its status as a nuclear weapons state was “irreversible” and key to ensuring regional stability, rejecting calls by the US and its allies for denuclearization.
Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted it would not abandon its nuclear arsenal, portraying it as essential to deterrence, with Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calling the policy a “line of no retreat” earlier this month.
The North’s statement came after a trilateral meeting between South Korea, Japan and the US in Tokyo on Friday, at which the allies reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Photo: AFP / KCNA VIA KNS
“The US and its vassal forces’ meaningless rhetoric against the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]... can never affect the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” the unnamed spokesperson said in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency, using the acronym for the North’s official name.
“The ‘denuclearization’ is an irreversibly finalized matter,” they added.
The spokesperson also cited Washington’s sales of weapons systems to Seoul and Tokyo as justification for Pyongyang’s pursuit of its nuclear program, describing it as “a strong security guarantee for regional stability and peace.”
“No matter how hard the US, Japan and the ROK [Republic of Korea] may quibble, they will never change the present position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” the official said, referring to the South by the acronym of its official name.
North Korea has accelerated its nuclear weapons program since talks with Washington broke down in 2019, when a summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi ended without agreement.
In a possible reference to the failed negotiations, the spokesperson said “no one can recover the ‘denuclearization’ permanently missed in the trend of the times.”
Kim recently hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Pyongyang, after the Chinese leader held back-to-back summits in Beijing with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neither side made any mention of denuclearization, according to their official media reports.
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