Daily US Times: Kim Jong Un of North Korea said he believes his country will no longer need to fight wars because its nuclear weapons guarantee its safety, North Korean state media reports.
North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday that leader said: “With our reliable and effective self-defensive nuclear deterrent, there will be no more war on this earth, and our country’s safety and future will be secured forever.”
Mr Kim was speaking to a group of veterans on the 67th anniversary of the armistice that effectively ended the Korean War, which fell on July 27.
He said that nuclear weapons would allow North Korea to defend itself “against any high pressure and military threats of imperialists and hostile forces.”
For years, North Korea has framed its pursuit of nuclear weapons as purely defensive and meant to deter attempts at invasion or regime change.
But some experts say nuclear weapons will embolden Pyongyang, allowing the Kim regime to adopt more bellicose and hostile policies while deterring adversaries from responding to lower-level aggression.
Regardless of the reason why North Korea is pursuing the ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons needed to deliver them, Kim’s comments Monday are an important reminder of just how difficult it will be to strike a deal that sees North Korea give up a program it views as a key to its own survival.
His comment came on one of the country’s most important holidays: the anniversary of the “Korean people’s victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War,” which is how North Korea refers to the Korean War.
Most historians agree that the conflict began when Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, invaded the South in an attempt to reunify the Korean Peninsula by force. However, North Korea teaches its citizens that the war began when South Korea and the United States marched on the North — and that Pyongyang won the war thanks to Kim Il Sung’s leadership.
Technically, the conflict still ongoing, as both fighting parties signed a truce — not a treaty — on July 27, 1953, that led to a cessation of hostilities but settled little else. North Korea has warned its people that the threat of invasion remains in the decades since. Even as the conflict faded from national memory in the United States.
Tensions between the USand North Korea are also rising up in recent months.
You may read: How a Chinese agent used LinkedIn to spy on the US
