There is a country in the West Europe which frequently finds fault with the DPRK’s righteous measures of strengthening self-defense capabilities. It is France.

Recently, France stated a so-called stand on our missile launches. So stereotyped it is that we can commit it to memory even with our eyes closed.

The world knows about the circumstances behind France’s possession of nuclear power and reinforcement of its nuclear arms. When we recall that, we can hardly refrain from having a feeling of discomfort about the unilateral unfriendly act of France toward the exercise of legitimate right to self-defense by a sovereign country.

In the 1960s, even though it was not exposed to direct military threat, France possessed nuclear weapons purely out of its ambition to maintain its position as a traditional big power saying that it can never be dependent on other country and should ensure its national independence, it is impossible to become a sovereign state without nukes and nuclear deterrent is the best guarantee of peace.

France claims to be a “model country” in the field of nuclear disarmament asserting that the ultimate goal of disarmament is a “world free from the nukes”.

But it is France who is exerting its efforts to bolster the nuclear force. For instance, it spent € 37 billion from 2019 to 2025, which is € 14 billion more than the amount spent from 2014 to 2019, on modernizing nuclear weapons. In April last month, it test-launched a new-type strategic ballistic missile “M51-2”.

France is continuing to get on our nerves by groundlessly finding fault with our measures to build up self-defense capacities against the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and military threats from it. It is definitely a double standard and unfair behavior of France.

We know French people would not be happy to hear that France follows the U.S.

Although the DPRK bears no grudge against and has never done any harm to France, it finds fault with the DPRK over its just act. This only makes us think that France is taking sides with the U.S. in its anachronistic hostile policy toward the DPRK.

What we would like to advise is that France, though belatedly, considers the situation of the Korean peninsula from an objective viewpoint, instead of indulging itself in unconvincing criticism for no good reason.

It would become a “power in Europe” if it maintains independence in the policy towards the DPRK as well, as befits a country leading the realization of “strategic independence” of Europe.

Kim Jin Hyok

Researcher of Korea-Europe Association