North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un called for the buildup of the country’s nuclear arsenal, demanding “rapid expansion” of the weapons program amid recent joint military drills between the United States and South Korea.
“Kim Jong Un said that the US-ROK intensified military nexus and the muscle-flexing are the most obvious manifestation of their will to ignite a war and the source of destroying the peace and security environment in the region,” state media Korean Central News Agency reported, referring to the relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea. According to the report, the North Korean leader explained that the military exercises have “always been provocative and dangerous in their nature but the gravity is increasing from the characteristics that they are recently plotting military nexus with the nuclear element involved.”
The development demands “counteraction with proactive and overwhelming changes,” Kim said, adding that the “most reliable and steadfast way and guarantee for controlling and keeping the security environment of the region and firmly defending the sovereignty and security of [North Korea] are only to make enemies afraid.”
Kim noted the “prevailing situation requires us to make a radical and swift change in the existing military theory and practice and rapid expansion of nuclearization,” the report emphasized.
Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea’s leader, recently warned the United States against engaging in talks surrounding denuclearization.
“Shortly ago, a person in authority of the White House said that the president stabilized the situation on the Korean peninsula and reached the first top-level agreement on denuclearization through the three DPRK-U.S. summit meetings during his first term of office and that he is still open to dialogue with the DPRK leader for achieving the complete denuclearization of the DPRK,” Kim said in a July statement. “We do not want to give any meaning to the U.S. side’s unilateral assessment of the past DPRK-U.S. dialogue.”
Kim further warned that an attempt to “deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” which she said was “established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people,” is a move that “will be thoroughly rejected.”
