North Korea said on Sunday that its nuclear weapons programme was “irreversible”, challenging the US push for denuclearisation a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit.
After President Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi last month, the United States said the two leaders shared the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula, although the Chinese statement did not mention the issue.
But Kim Yo-jong, the sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, described the comments as “false information”, and described the US call for denuclearisation as an “anachronistic dream”, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
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She said: “Steadily beefing up the nuclear war deterrent for self-defence … is an irreversible final conclusion to be carried out unconditionally.”
Kim, the head of the Workers’ Party’s general affairs department, added: “The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]’s status as a nuclear weapons state is the line of no retreat and it is a stark reality whether anyone recognises it or not.”
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North Korea regards its nuclear weapons as the key to self-defence, and Kim said Pyongyang would “never compromise as regards the issue of defence and sovereignty”.
One of the main areas of interest during Xi’s two-day visit, his first to North Korea in seven years, will be whether he raises the issue of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.