North Korea has sharply criticized South Korea's planned nuclear-powered submarine, saying it will lead to the acquisition of nuclear weapons, while defending its own nuclear arsenal.
According to the Korean Central News Agency on the 29th, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a memorandum titled "The U.S. Nuclear Proliferation Acts That Pose a Grave Challenge to International Peace and Security and Our Unchanging Choice of Response" that "cooperation between the United States and South Korea on nuclear submarines will realize South Korea's dangerous nuclear ambitions to secure the right to enrich weapons-grade nuclear material and, ultimately, to build nuclear weapons." The ministry singled out the United States, which approved South Korea's acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, as "the chief culprit of vertical proliferation that is bringing a global nuclear nightmare."
The ministry traced the U.S. nuclear development program in detail, starting from the first American nuclear test in 1945, and said Washington was the party undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It went on to justify the expansion of its own nuclear forces, saying, "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a responsible nuclear weapons state," and that it would "thoroughly proceed on the basis of the grave reality that no international organization or international treaty can restrain the United States' nuclear buildup and proliferation schemes."
An official at the Ministry of Unification said the memorandum "raises questions about the duality of the international nuclear regime, including the NPT and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and stresses the legitimacy of its own nuclear possession by condemning U.S. proliferation." The official added that it "appears to be an effort to highlight that it is a responsible nuclear weapons state." The move is read as an attempt to steer any future resumption of talks with Washington toward nuclear arms reduction rather than denuclearization.
Kim Son-gyong, vice minister of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, also reiterated in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on the 28th that "our status as a nuclear weapons state is irreversible." Kim criticized South Korea's acquisition of nuclear submarines, saying it was "making an already unstable regional security situation even more fragile."
