North Korea said on Sunday that its status as a nuclear power is “irreversible” and key to ensuring stability in the region. The country thus rejected calls from the United States and its allies for denuclearization. TASR reports according to the AFP agency. Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted it will not give up its nuclear arsenal, which it sees as essential for deterrence, with Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong-un’s influential younger sister, calling the policy a “line of no retreat” earlier this month.
North Korea’s statement came after a trilateral meeting between South Korea, Japan and the United States in Tokyo on Friday, in which the allies reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” according to the Foreign Ministry in Seoul. “The meaningless rhetoric of the US and its vassal forces against the DPRK… can never affect the DPRK’s irreversible status as a nuclear state,” an unnamed spokesman said in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency on Sunday, adding that “denuclearization” was an irreversibly closed matter.
The spokesman also cited Washington’s sale of weapons systems to Seoul and Tokyo as Pyongyang’s justification for continuing its nuclear program, calling it a “strong security guarantee of regional stability and peace.” “No matter how much the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea haggle, they will never change the DPRK’s current status as a nuclear power,” the spokesman said.
North Korea has accelerated its nuclear program since 2019, when talks with Washington collapsed and a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi ended without an agreement. In a possible allusion to the failed negotiations, the spokesman said that “no one can restore ‘denuclearization’, which has been permanently lost in the current trend”. Kim recently hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Pyongyang, after holding back-to-back summits with Trump and Putin in Beijing as the Chinese leader. According to official media reports, neither side mentioned denuclearization.
