North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called his country’s nuclear weapons a solid security guarantee and a “reliable, effective” deterrent that could prevent a second war on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim made the remarks on Monday as he celebrated the 67th anniversary of the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War at a reception for war veterans in Pyongyang, according to a report by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) yesterday.
The speech signalled once again that the North Korean leader has no intention of giving up his nuclear arsenal despite the United States’s attempts to get him to do so.
Kim said North Korea had developed nuclear weapons to win the “absolute strength” to prevent another war.
“Now we are capable of defending ourselves in the face of any form of high-intensity pressure and military threats from imperialist and hostile forces,” he said.
The Korean War, which pitted Soviet and China-backed troops from the north against US-led United Nations forces, killed an estimated two million people and destroyed cities and villages on both sides of the border.
The three-year conflict ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty, leaving North and South technically at war.
Kim entered this year with a promise to bolster his nuclear programme and threatened to unveil a new “strategic” weapon. He also said he would no longer be bound by a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.❑
