SEOUL: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is “absolutely non-negotiable”, leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said in a statement carried by state media on Sunday, ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Pyongyang has long insisted on its right to nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, although these are banned under the terms of UN Security Council sanctions. It included its nuclear status in its constitution in 2023.
“Our status as a nuclear power is absolutely non-negotiable,” Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said in a statement released by the North Korean official. Rodong Sinmunadding that the North “will not tolerate any threats.”
A key player in the country’s communications and foreign policy, Kim Yo Jong’s statement comes on the eve of Xi’s visit to North Korea, scheduled for Monday to Tuesday, according to official media.
Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support for North Korea, which is one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and subject to heavy international sanctions.
Xi’s upcoming visit to Pyongyang would be his first in seven years and comes after he held back-to-back summits with US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin last month.
Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state since Kim Jong Un’s failed summit with Trump in 2019 on the scope of denuclearization and sanctions relief.
The North Korean leader has since been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, gaining key support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces.
He inspected a major munitions factory over the weekend and requested that it increase its production capacity, according to a separate report from the official. Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday.
This was “in order to provide a sufficient quantity of missiles”, KCNA he was quoted as saying.
Fake news
Kim Yo Jong, in her statement, went on to criticize Washington for its comments that North Korea’s goal of denuclearization was reaffirmed during last month’s summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The White House released a fact sheet following the summit stating that “President Trump and President Xi have confirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea,” which Kim Yo Jong called false.
“Some officials in the United States have not yet woken up from their escapist and anachronistic dream,” she said.
“This is nothing more than Washington’s usual dissemination of false information.”
She rejected Washington’s attempts to deny or challenge the North’s status as a nuclear power, saying it “has no legal force.”
“The policy of continuously strengthening the country’s self-defense nuclear deterrent, as defined by the national leader, is an irreversible path that must be implemented without fail,” she added.
The statement underscores Pyongyang’s “sensitivity” to any suggestion of a U.S.-China deal on North Korea’s denuclearization, said Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. AFP.
“Kim’s main message was a categorical rejection of reports of talks between the United States and China on the denuclearization of North Korea, calling them ‘fake news,'” he said.
It is possible that Pyongyang “confirmed with Beijing” during the summit coordination process that no such discussion had taken place, Hong added.
