North Korea Calls Its Nukes ‘Stark Reality

The organization of Seven affluent nations’ recent appeal for the North to denuclearize was scorned by North Korea’s foreign minister on Friday, who referred to the organization as a “tool for ensuring the U.S. hegemony.”

The senior diplomats from the G-7 countries recently convened in Japan and jointly denounced the latest ballistic missile tests by North Korea. They also reaffirmed their commitment to seeing North Korea completely give up its nuclear arsenal.

Their statement served as a model for leaders at the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, next month, where the subject of North Korea’s nuclear program will surely reappear.

The G-7 nations of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the European Union have threatened to take unspecified “strong counteraction” if North Korea exhibits “any behavioral attempt” to infringe on its fundamental interests, according to North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui.

In a statement reported by North Korean official media, Choe stated, “G7, a closed group of a few egoistic countries, does not represent the just international community but serves as a political tool for ensuring the U.S. hegemony.”

Choe claimed that the G-7 statement “malignantly” brought up the North’s rightful assertion of its sovereignty.
North Korea has always maintained that the United States’ nuclear threats against it were the reason it was driven to acquire nuclear weapons.

Although U.S. and South Korean officials have declared their drills are defensive and they have no plans of attacking the North, the North has claimed that the regular military exercises the United States and South Korea conduct is a practice for an invasion.

Since the beginning of last year, North Korea has conducted nearly 100 missile tests to counteract American military exercises with South Korea. However, many observers believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un likely uses the military exercises of his competitors as an excuse to progress his weapons programs, solidify his domestic authority, and gain recognition as an actual nuclear state to impose sanctions on the North.

Eleven rounds of U.N. sanctions have been used against North Korea. Penalties due to its previous, the UN prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile testing—resolutions of the Security Council. The sanctions, according to Kim, “stifle” the country’s economy.

North Korea would never have the status of a nuclear-weapons state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the G-7 foreign ministers stated in their communiqué on Tuesday.

The goal of the deal was to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons outside of the original five nuclear-armed states (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France).

The five countries agree to advance nuclear disarmament and ensure non-nuclear governments’ access to peaceful nuclear technology for generating energy in return for non-nuclear signatory nations’ pledge to refrain from pursuing atomic weapons.

Choe said that North Korea is exempt from any commitments under the treaty since it withdrew from it 20 years ago and that its status as a nuclear weapons state “will remain an undeniable and stark reality.”

North Korea formally withdrew from the NPT in 2003, claiming what it viewed as American hostility, having signed the NPT in 1985.

Six nuclear tests and several other weapons tests have been carried out by North Korea since 2006 to perfect nuclear-tipped missiles for use against the United States and South Korea.