Pyongyang says its standing as nuclear-armed state ‘won’t change based mostly on exterior rhetorical claims’.
Printed On 7 Could 2026
North Korea’s envoy to the United Nations has declared that Pyongyang won’t be certain by any treaty on atomic weapons and that no exterior stress will change its standing as a nuclear-armed state.
Ambassador Kim Tune’s assertion – carried by state media on Thursday – got here as the US and different nations criticised North Korea’s nuclear programme on the ongoing UN conference reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
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Pyongyang withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and has since performed six nuclear checks, selling a number of UN Safety Council sanctions.
The nation is believed to carry dozens of nuclear warheads.
“On the eleventh NPT Evaluation Convention presently beneath method at UN headquarters, the US and sure nations following its lead are groundlessly calling into query the present standing and train of sovereign rights,” Kim stated, in keeping with the official Korean Central Information Company.
“The standing of the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea as a nuclear-armed state won’t change based mostly on exterior rhetorical claims or unilateral needs,” he added.
“To make it clear as soon as once more, the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea won’t be certain by the Non-Proliferation Treaty beneath any circumstances in any respect.”
He continued that the nation’s standing as a nuclear-armed state has been “enshrined within the structure, transparently declaring the rules of nuclear weapons use”.
North Korea has lengthy insisted that it’ll not surrender its nuclear arsenal, describing its path as “irreversible” and pledging to strengthen its capabilities.
It has despatched floor troops and artillery shells to help Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and observers say Pyongyang is receiving army expertise help from Moscow in return.
The 9 nuclear-armed states – Russia, the US, France, the UK, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads in January 2025, the Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute (SIPRI) reported.
The US and Russia maintain almost 90 p.c of nuclear weapons globally and have carried out main programmes to modernise them in recent times, in keeping with SIPRI.
The nuclear problem has been on the coronary heart of the US and Israel’s conflict on Iran, with US President Donald Trump saying that Tehran – a signatory to the NPT – can by no means have a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies searching for an atomic weapon and has lengthy demanded Washington acknowledge its proper to complement uranium.
