SEOUL: North Korea's nuclear weapons program is “absolutely non-negotiable,” leader Kim Jong Un's powerful sister said in a statement carried by state media on Sunday, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit.
Pyongyang has long insisted on its right to have nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, even though they are prohibited under the terms of U.N. Security Council sanctions. It enshrines its nuclear status in its constitution in 2023.
“Our status as a nuclear power is absolutely non-negotiable,” Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, said in a statement released by the North Korean official. Rodong Sinmunadding that the North “will not tolerate any threat.”
A key player in the country's communications and foreign policy, Kim Yo Jong's statement came on the eve of Xi's visit to North Korea, scheduled for Monday to Tuesday, according to state media.
Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support for North Korea, one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and subject to strong international sanctions.
Xi's upcoming visit to Pyongyang would be his first in seven years and comes after he hosted back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.
Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state since Kim Jong Un's 2019 summit with Trump collapsed over the scope of denuclearization and sanctions relief.
Since then, North Korea's leader has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine and gained critical support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces.
Over the weekend he inspected a major munitions factory and asked it to increase its production capacity, according to a separate report by the official. Korean Central News Agency (ACNC) on Sunday.
This was “to supply a sufficient number of missiles”, KCNA quoted him saying.
False information
Kim Yo Jong, in her statement, sharply criticized Washington for its comments that the goal of North Korea's denuclearization had been reaffirmed during last month's summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The White House released a fact sheet after the summit stating that “President Trump and President Xi confirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea,” which Kim Yo Jong said was false.
“Some officials in the United States have not yet awakened from their escapist and anachronistic dream,” he said.
“This is nothing more than Washington's usual dissemination of false information.”
He rejected Washington's attempts to deny or question North Korea's status as a nuclear power, saying it “has no legal force.”
“The policy of continuously strengthening the country's self-defense nuclear deterrent, as established by the nation's leader, is an irreversible path that must be implemented without fail,” he added.
The statement underscores Pyongyang's “sensitivity” to any suggestion of a U.S.-China deal on North Korea's denuclearization, said Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. AFP.
“Kim's central message was a categorical rejection of reports on US-China discussions on North Korea's denuclearization as 'false information,'” he said.
Pyongyang may have “confirmed with Beijing” during the summit coordination process that no such discussion had taken place, Hong added.
