Choe Son Hui, foreign minister of the DPRK, issued the following press statement on Saturday:

On September 29 the U.S. and its vassal states convened closed-door negotiations of the UN Security Council, in which they denounced the inviolable constitutional activities of the DPRK and its measures for bolstering up the capabilities for self-defence.

I brand the illegal and outrageous acts of the U.S. and other hostile forces, which termed the exercise of the DPRK’s entirely just exercise of its sovereignty a “provocation” and “threat”, as a frontal challenge to the sovereignty of the DPRK and undisguised interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, and vehemently denounce and reject them.

It is the extreme double standard for the UNSC to take issue with the DPRK over the exercise of its legitimate sovereign right only, while completely overlooking the ceaseless military provocations being perpetrated by the U.S. and its vassal forces, which declared the “end of regime” in the DPRK as their national policy, to wreck peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.

The abnormal behavior of the UNSC, which pulls up a sovereign state over its legislative activities, legitimate use of space and normal development of external relations, proves that the hostile forces’ insistence on the “implementation of the UN resolution” means, in essence, the complete renunciation of the sovereignty by the DPRK.

It is an inevitable result in the DPRK’s historical process for bolstering up its national defence capabilities and raising its national prestige that it fixed its legal position as a responsible nuclear weapons state at the highest level.

The DPRK formulated its status as a nuclear weapons state in its constitution, which is of great significance in the fact that it guarantees the eternal foundation for its prosperity and provided a powerful legal lever for defending its sovereignty as a nuclear-armed nation, not merely the constitutional work that revised and supplemented the provisions of the supreme code of the nation.

The position and role of the nuclear weapons in ensuring the security of the DPRK accurately reflect the threats from the outside hostile forces and the ever-changing global geopolitical structure at present and in the future.

It is the undeniable stark reality that the U.S. and its vassal forces’ ceaseless nuclear threats to the DPRK, which has lingered for more than half a century, have become a decisive factor and premise that triggered the DPRK’s access to nuclear weapons and constant bolstering of its nuclear force.

It is the history never to be written off nor to be revised that the DPRK was compelled to arm itself with nuclear weapons as the U.S. turned the Korean peninsula into a nuclear arsenal decades before the DPRK had access to nuclear weapons, and has ceaselessly escalated its nuclear threats to the DPRK.

The DPRK is strengthening the role of its nuclear force in ensuring national security and consolidating its legal and institutional position to cope with the U.S. and its followers’ moves of institutionalizing the use of their nuclear weapons against the DPRK and making it their policy. No one is entitled to take issue with this independent right of a sovereign state.

As long as the U.S., the imperialist entity, exists, it is the destiny of the DPRK to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

If the U.S. and other hostile forces try to deny the DPRK’s constitutional position as a nuclear weapons state or deprive it of that position by forcing denuclearization upon it, it will be regarded as the most serious violation of its sovereignty and constitution forcing it to renounce its constitution and social system.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to warn the UNSC against its behavior of unhesitatingly employing illegal and hideous double standard, blindly following the U.S., bereft of equity and justice.

We will deter all the hostile forces’ attempts to violate the inviolable sovereignty of the DPRK by launching the strongest and overwhelming counteraction and firmly defend its position as a nuclear weapons state, the supreme interests of its national security, from the outside hostile acts.