Kim Jong-un: We will not give up our nuclear arsenal

SANAA, July 28 (YPA) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reiterated that his country will not give up its nuclear arsenal, stressing that  Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons guarantee its security, state media reported Tuesday.

Kim addressed a veterans’ meeting on the 67th anniversary of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“Thanks to our credible and effective nuclear deterrent to self-defense, there will never be a word of war on this earth,” Kim was quoted as saying.

“Our national security and our future will be guaranteed forever,” he said.

Pyongyang insists on its need to the nuclear arsenal to deter what it describes as a possible US invasion, and has spent decades developing it despite its international isolation and international sanctions.

Some three million Koreans were killed in the three-year conflict on the Korean peninsula, but the truce did not turn into a peace treaty so that the North and the South would technically remain at war.

The inter-Korean relationship has been deadlocked for months after the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump last year.

The nuclear negotiations stalled when the search for concessions north Korea could make in exchange for sanctions relief.

Kim announced in December that he had terminated an understanding on nuclear and ballistic tests, and Pyongyang has repeatedly said it has no intention of continuing the talks unless Washington halts its “hostile” policies toward North Korea.

E.M