The spokesman for the DPRK government released a statement on July 6 to criticize the US and the south Korean authorities for making the prospects for the Korean peninsula denuclearization more complicated.

President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il put their heart and soul into denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and did everything they possibly could to this end, the statement said. The Korean peninsula denuclearization is the earnest instruction of the great leaders and unshakeable will of our Party, army and people, it noted.

The DPRK built a deterrent powerful enough to overpower the nuclear threat and preemptive nuclear strike of the foreign forces, and it was, in the final analysis, an indispensable strategic option to build a lasting peace mechanism in the peninsula and then denuclearize the whole peninsula, it said. The Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea clarified the political stand that the DPRK would remove the root cause of the danger of nuclear war the US imposes on it by dint of the powerful nuclear deterrent and defend regional and global peace, it would not use nuclear weapons first as long as the hostile forces do not encroach on its sovereignty by nukes and it would make every effort to honestly fulfil its commitments to nuclear non-proliferation it assumes before the international community and realize the denuclearization of the world, it added.

However, the US, south Korean authorities and other anti-DPRK hostile forces pick a quarrel with its nukes calling them a “threat” to peace in the Korean peninsula and the world and persistently argue that no problem would be solved before the “north is denuclearized first,” it said.

The DPRK demands the denuclearization of the whole Korean peninsula including the dismantlement of nukes in south Korea and denuclearization around it, it noted, and referred to how the US and puppet clan gave rise to and worsened the Korean peninsula nuclear issue.

“It is none other than the US that split Korean families into the north and south by A-bomb blackmail during the Korean war in the 1950s and inflicted pain on them, and posed constant unprecedented nuclear threat to the DPRK by shipping over 1 000 tactical nukes of all kinds to south Korea and staging anti-north nuclear war games, large and small, incessantly after the war. It is also the US and the puppet south Korea that flagrantly violated and reduced the joint declaration on the denuclearization in the Korean peninsula to a mere scrap of paper though it was adopted in the early 1990s at the initiative and by the strenuous efforts of the DPRK.

“The US has intensified nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK systematically while advocating an NCND policy that it would not confirm nor deny the presence of nukes and shipping illegal nuclear weapons into south Korea continuously, finally crippling the process of the Korean peninsula denuclearization.

“The south Korean pro-US conservative forces have positively supported the US moves to maintain nuclear hegemony over the Korean peninsula, and in particular, the Park Geun Hye clan is hell-bent on starting a nuclear war by all means by bringing in the three strategic nuclear strike means of the US”.

The statement described “north Korea’s nuclear threat” hyped by the US and the Park Geun Hye group as nothing more than giving vent to their anger out of a sense of shame as they cannot wield nuclear stick freely any longer in the face of the strong nuclear deterrent of the DPRK.

They should follow the path of untying the knot they made by themselves and the path should begin not from the “north’s denuclearization first”, but from completely removing the root cause of nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK, it noted.

The statement put forward the following principled demands:

First, all the US nuclear weapons should be made public that it neither confirms nor denies after shipping to south Korea.

Second, all nuclear weapons and their bases in south Korea should be removed and verified before the world.

Third, the US should guarantee that it will not bring in nuclear strike means it frequently deploys in the Korean peninsula and its vicinity again.

Fourth, it should promise that it will not threaten or blackmail the DPRK by nuke or war acts involving nukes in any case, nor use nukes against it.

Fifth, it should declare the withdrawal of its forces that have the right to use nukes in south Korea.

Saying that if such security guarantee is actually provided, the DPRK will take corresponding measures, the statement noted the Korean peninsula denuclearization entirely depends on the approach and behaviour of the US and the south Korean authorities.