North Korea on Monday rejected a G7 Foreign Ministers statement calling for denuclearization, vowing instead to strengthen its nuclear forces. Leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a cruise missile test-launch last month as Pyongyang continues to develop weapons. File Photo by KCNA/EPA-EFE
SEOUL, March 17 (UPI) — North Korea on Monday vowed to “steadily update and strengthen” its nuclear arsenal, rejecting a joint statement by the Group of Seven Foreign Ministers calling for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.
The North’s Foreign Ministry said its position as a nuclear weapons state has been “fixed permanently by the supreme law of its state.”
“The DPRK’s nuclear armed forces will exist forever as a powerful means of justice which defends the sovereignty of the state, territorial integrity and fundamental interests, prevents a war in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia and guarantees a strategic stability of the world,” the ministry said in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
“The DPRK will steadily update and strengthen its nuclear armed forces both in quality and quantity in response to the nuclear threat from outside,” it added.
In September 2022, the North passed a law declaring itself a nuclear weapons state and giving it the right to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike to protect itself. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the decision “irreversible” and later amended the country’s constitution to enshrine the permanent growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
North Korea’s statement followed a meeting of the G7 Foreign Ministers in Charlevoix, Canada last week. On Friday, the group of advanced nations issued a joint statement, calling on the North to “abandon all its nuclear weapons and any other weapons of mass destruction as well as ballistic missile programs in accordance with all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.”
In its response, the North Korean Foreign Ministry slammed the G7 states as the “chief criminals wrecking the global peace and security and the international nuclear non-proliferation system.”
“G7, which has turned into a nuclear criminal group gravely threatening the global peace and security, should thoroughly abandon its anachronistic ambition for nuclear hegemony before talking about someone’s ‘denuclearization’ and ‘dismantlement of nukes,'” the ministry said.
The United States and South Korea kicked off their annual springtime Freedom Shield military exercise last week. While Washington and Seoul say their joint drills are defensive, North Korea frequently condemns the exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.
The state-run KCNA issued a commentary on Wednesday calling the joint drills “dangerous and undesirable doings germinating a touch-and-go situation, the world’s first nuclear war.”
Earlier in the week, North Korea fired a salvo of close-range ballistic missiles into the Yellow Sea following a pair of statements criticizing Freedom Shield and warning of retaliatory provocations.
Despite facing a raft of international sanctions, Pyongyang has continued to develop its nuclear and missile programs. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently visited the construction site of the country’s first “nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” according to a KCNA report.
While the report did not provide specific details about the submarine, the North generally uses the term “strategic” to indicate that missiles are nuclear-capable.