North Korea vows to increase nuclear deterrent
North Korea’s deputy leader said today that his communist nation will increase its nuclear deterrent to defend itself against alleged US threats of invasion.
“We will continue increasing our self-defensive nuclear deterrent against the enemies’ policy to isolate and stifle the republic,” Kim Yong Nam, head of the North’s legislature, told a national meeting commemorating tomorrow’s anniversary of the birth of its founding president, Kim Il Sung.
“If the US imperialists recklessly set the fire of war on the Korean Peninsula despite our repeated warnings ... we will mercilessly and completely destroy the invaders so they won’t live again,” Kim was quoted as saying by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The comments come amid a heightened stand-off over the North’s nuclear weapons programme. North Korea claimed in February to possess atomic weapons and said it would indefinitely boycott international disarmament talks. It also has demanded that Washington apologise for remarks by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice describing the North as one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny.”
Following its February announcement, the North claimed last month that it had bolsered its nuclear arsenal.
Kim’s birthday is the biggest national holiday in North Korea, known as the “Day of the Sun.” He remains the country’s “eternal president” in its constitution, even after dying at age 82 on July 8, 1994, after ruling for half a century.
