According to state media, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has called for more advanced nuclear weapons to confront the threat posed by the United States and has enshrined his country’s nuclear status in its constitution.
North Korea has launched a record number of missile launches this year despite international restrictions over its nuclear weapons program and despite warnings from the United States, South Korea, and their allies.
The constitutional amendment was made as a result of Kim Jong Un’s statement that North Korea was a “irreversible” nuclear weapons state last year, which followed diplomatic efforts to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arsenal failing.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim stated during a State People’s Assembly meeting that 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”.
Tuesday and Wednesday saw meetings of the rubber-stamp legislature.
Kim asserted that North Korea required nuclear weapons to defend itself against an existential threat posed by 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.
