Nuke access to counter US threat: DPRK
Pyongyang, Mar 16 : The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Saturday said its access to nukes is for countering US nuclear threat.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the country conducted the third nuclear test in a safe and perfect way on a high level with the use of a smaller and lighter A-bomb with great explosive power.
"The DPRK's access to nukes is not for getting recognition from the international community. By nature, nuclear possession was going against the will of the DPRK," said KCNA. "The Korean nation has long been exposed to nuclear threat."
The news agency said many Koreans, who were taken to Japan for forced labor or military service during its colonial rule over Korea, fell victims to U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The number of Korean victims is the highest next to the Japanese. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the U.S. threatened to drop A-bombs on the DPRK, forcing millions of family members to live separated in the north and the south.
"After the war, the U.S. deployed more than 1 000 nuclear weapons in south Korea, carrying on DPRK-targeted nuclear war rehearsals annually for scores of years," said KCNA.
Meanwhile, the DPRK joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and inked the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework in an attempt to remove the U.S. nuclear threat.
"However, the U.S. stopped short of implementing all agreements signed with the DPRK over the nuclear issue and relations between the two countries while abusing them only to isolate and stifle the DPRK. In the new century, the U.S. put the DPRK on the list of preemptive nuclear attack targets," said the agency.
"Such developments compelled the DPRK to manufacture nuclear weapons in order to avert a war and defend its social system and destiny. In view of the self-defense right, it is quite natural for the DPRK to get access to nuclear weapons in face of the U.S. attempt for preemptive nuclear strike," it said.
The U.S. should ponder over the consequences to be entailed by a war against the DPRK which has turned into a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, said KCNA.