North Korea says nuclear status final and irreversible

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in a photo released by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency [YONHAP]

North Korea's foreign minister said Friday that the regime's status as a nuclear-armed state is "final and irreversible," according to Pyongyang's state media on Friday.

The remarks by Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui were prompted by a recent joint statement by top diplomats from the Group of Seven (G7), which Choe said amounted to interference in the North’s internal affairs.

The G7 foreign minister statement condemned the North’s ballistic missile launches, including that of a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, and said Pyongyang “cannot and will never” be recognized as a legitimate nuclear weapons state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

They urged the North to abandon its nuclear weapons and fully comply with NPT safeguards.

In response, Choe said that the G7 “has neither authority nor qualification to say this or that” about what she called the North’s “exercise of its sovereignty and its national status,” according to an English-language report carried by the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The North Korean foreign minister also said that the regime’s status as a “world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible,” warning that it is an “undeniable and stark reality” even if the United States refuses to recognize it “for a thousand years.”

Choe also claimed the security of the United States “can be guaranteed only when it completely roots out its hostile policy toward the DPRK,” referring to the North by the acronym for its official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The North’s foreign minister added that the country's position as a nuclear power was not “granted or recognized,” but rather established with its position of a nuclear deterrent and Pyongyang’s own law, passed in September, which declared the regime a nuclear weapons state.

“We will never seek any recognition and approval from anyone as we are satisfied with our access to the strength for a tit-for-tat strike against the U.S. nuclear threat,” she said.

Choe argued the North has no obligations under the NPT, claiming the regime legally withdrew from the treaty in 2003.

Although the treaty requires a signatory to give a three-month notice and cite “extraordinary events” that endanger its “supreme interests” to withdraw, Pyongyang declared its immediate withdrawal in 2003, blaming South Korean-U.S. hostility and arguing it had first signaled its intent to leave the NPT in 1993.

But the commander of United States Forces Korea (USFK) on Thursday said that the North’s actions “demonstrate that if conflict were to resume, it would be due to [its own] aggression.”

Speaking at a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services committee, Gen. Paul LaCamera warned that the North’s nuclear weapons policy allows the regime to preemptively use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states if they are deemed to be “colluding with nuclear states.”

According to the USFK commander, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also “believes a nuclear deterrent is the best means to preserve his regime and coerce the international community to lift sanctions.”

On Friday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry called the North’s claim of being a nuclear power “far-fetched” and warned the regime’s isolation would only deepen if it persisted in its development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

“We once again urge North Korea to cease its far-fetched insistence and threat and listen to the concerns of the international society over its reckless nuclear and missile provocations,” Lee Hyo-jung, the ministry’s deputy spokesperson, told reporters.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]