North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution, with leader Kim Jong Un calling for more modern atomic weapons to counter the threat from the US state media reported Thursday.
Despite international sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme, North Korea has conducted a record number of missile tests this year, ignoring warnings from the US, South Korea and their allies.
North Korea’s “nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout,” Kim said at a meeting of the State People’s Assembly, as per the official Korean Central News Agency.
Kim said North Korea needed nuclear weapons to counter an existential threat from the US and its allies.
The United States has “maximized its nuclear war threats to our Republic by resuming the large-scale nuclear war joint drills with clear aggressive nature and putting the deployment of its strategic nuclear assets near the Korean peninsula on a permanent basis,” he said.
Kim also described the recently enhanced security cooperation between the US, South Korea, and Japan as the “worst actual threat”. As a result, he added, “it is very important for the DPRK to accelerate the modernisation of nuclear weapons in order to hold the definite edge of strategic deterrence”.
Kim also “stressed the need to push ahead with the work for exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means”, according to KCNA.
