NEW YORK — North Korea once again displayed its self-declared status as a nuclear weapons state before the world in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, while arguing that Washington's approval last year for South Korea to build nuclear-powered submarines is destabilizing the Korean Peninsula.
"We reaffirm our official position that our status as a nuclear weapons state can never be reversed under any circumstances or by any means," Kim Son Gyong, vice foreign minister of North Korea, said on the 28th during the general debate of the 81st U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York. "The nuclear deterrent possessed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is an absolute force and an irresistible force for defending sovereignty, security and peace against outside aggression and threats." Kim went on to say that "the reason no physical clash has occurred on the Korean Peninsula and security is being maintained is that we possess a powerful war deterrent and are thoroughly managing the will of hostile forces to use armed force." He added that the country "will remain faithful to the mission of a nuclear weapons state in firmly defending national sovereignty and fundamental interests and in guaranteeing peace and security in the region and the world, by strictly controlling and managing all manner of threats imposed from outside through overwhelming strength."
Kim also criticized South Korea's recent push to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. "The current military trend, in which the United States has approved and is actively pursuing Seoul's ambition to possess nuclear-powered submarines while relocating and deploying various equipment including the latest missiles and unmanned aircraft to the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas, is making an already unstable regional security situation even more fragile," he said.
North Korea sent then-Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong to the General Assembly in 2014 and 2015 and then-Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho in 2016 through 2018, but halted the dispatch of senior officials after the North Korea-U.S. summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, collapsed in February 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic also played a part. For the six years from 2019 through 2024, Kim Song, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, delivered the address. The North then resumed sending a senior official for the first time in seven years by dispatching Kim last year, after President Donald Trump returned to office.
