North Korea has said its position as a nuclear weapons state is “irreversible” and dismissed renewed calls from the United States and its allies for the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
The statement, published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday, came two days after senior officials from South Korea, Japan and the United States met in Tokyo and reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”, according to South Korea’s foreign ministry.
An unnamed North Korean spokesperson said the efforts of Washington and its allies would have no impact on Pyongyang’s nuclear policy.
“The US and its vassal forces’ meaningless rhetoric against the DPRK... can never affect the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” the spokesperson said, using the acronym for the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The ‘denuclearisation’ is an irreversibly finalised matter,” the official added.
Pyongyang has repeatedly stated that it will not give up its nuclear arsenal, describing it as essential for national defence and deterrence. Earlier this month, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, described the country’s nuclear policy as a “line of no retreat”.
In Sunday’s statement, the spokesperson also pointed to US weapons sales to South Korea and Japan as justification for maintaining and expanding North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. The programme was described as “a strong security guarantee for regional stability and peace”.
“No matter how hard the US, Japan and the ROK may quibble, they will never change the present position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” the spokesperson said, referring to South Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Republic of Korea.
North Korea has significantly accelerated its nuclear weapons programme since negotiations with Washington collapsed in 2019. Talks broke down after a summit in Hanoi between Kim Jong Un and then US President Donald Trump ended without an agreement.
In an apparent reference to those failed negotiations, the spokesperson said that “no one can recover the ‘denuclearisation’ permanently missed in the trend of the times”.
The statement follows a recent visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang. The trip came after Xi held successive summits in Beijing with Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neither China nor North Korea mentioned denuclearisation in their official reports on the visit.
