“With our reliable and effective self-defense nuclear deterrent, there will be no more war on this earth, and the security and future of our country will be assured forever,” Kim said in a speech, the North Korean Central News Agency reported ( KCNA). Tuesday.
North Korea has for years framed its pursuit of nuclear weapons as purely defensive and designed to deter attempts at invasion or regime change. But some experts say nuclear weapons will embolden Pyongyang, allowing the Kim regime to adopt more hostile and belligerent policies while deterring opponents from responding to low-level aggression.
Regardless of why North Korea is seeking nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles needed to deliver them, Kim’s comments on Monday are an important reminder of how difficult it will be to reach an agreement in which Pyongyang abandons a program it considers key. to their own survival.
Kim’s speech came at one of North Korea’s most important festivals: the anniversary of the “victory of the Korean people in the Great War for the Liberation of the Fatherland,” which is how North Korea refers to the War of Korea.
Most historians agree that the conflict began when Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current North Korean leader, invaded the South in an attempt to reunify the Korean peninsula by force. However, North Korea teaches its citizens that the war started when the United States and South Korea marched north, and that Pyongyang won the war thanks to the leadership of Kim Il Sung.
The conflict is technically still ongoing, as the fighting parties signed a truce, not a treaty, on July 27, 1953, which led to a cessation of hostilities but resolved little else. In subsequent decades, North Korea warned its people that the threat of invasion persists, even when the conflict disappeared from national memory in the United States.
Although some were optimistic that the summit of Kim and United States President Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018 could lead to a breakthrough that had long eluded both sides, the nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang did not they have made no tangible progress.
While the North Koreans have hinted that they are open to yet another summit between Trump and Kim, the prospects for one appear to be slim.
Kim also said he believed the parameters of the negotiations between the two countries should change to focus on “withdrawing (US) hostility” to North Korea rather than focus on changing denuclearization for the sake of sanctions, essentially raising the price of future Washington and Pyongyang talks.
North Korea has for years accused the United States of employing what it calls a “hostile policy” against the Kim regime, signaling Washington’s alliance with South Korea, its commitment to protect South Korea under the “nuclear umbrella.” American and American force deployments in East Asia.
“We would like to make it clear that it does not necessarily mean that denuclearization is not possible,” Kim said in a statement released by KCNA. “But what we mean is that it is not possible at this time. I remind the US that denuclearization on the Korean peninsula can only take place when major changes are made on the other side.”
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