North Korea said on Sunday that its status as a nuclear weapons state is “irreversible” and essential for regional stability, rejecting renewed calls from the United States and its allies for denuclearisation.
According to AFP report, Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted that it will not abandon its nuclear arsenal. It describes the weapons as vital for deterrence. Earlier this month, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong Un, called the policy a “line of no retreat”.
The latest statement came after a trilateral meeting between South Korea, Japan and the United States in Tokyo on Friday. At the meeting, the three allies reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”, according to South Korea’s foreign ministry.
A spokesperson for North Korea, quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), rejected the position of Washington and its allies.
“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 statement said, referring to North Korea by its official name.
The spokesperson added that “denuclearisation” is an “irreversibly finalised matter”.
The statement also cited US arms sales to South Korea and Japan as justification for Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, describing it 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,” it said, using the official name of South Korea.
North Korea has expanded its nuclear programme since talks with Washington collapsed in 2019. That came after a summit between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi ended without agreement.
In what appeared to be a reference to those failed negotiations, the spokesperson said “no one can recover the ‘denuclearisation’ permanently missed in the trend of the times”.
Kim Jong Un recently hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Pyongyang. The visit followed Xi’s back-to-back summits in Beijing with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neither side made any reference to denuclearisation in their official statements, according to state media reports.
