Foreign Ministry Issues Memorandum on N-Issue

Foreign Ministry Issues Memorandum on N-Issue

Pyongyang, April 21 (KCNA) -- The DPRK Foreign Ministry, in a memorandum issued on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday, underscored the need to get a correct understanding of how nuclearization started on the peninsula and what was the root cause of it if a solution to the denuclearization of the peninsula is to be found with proper understanding of its essence. According to the memorandum, no nation in the world has been exposed to the nuclear threat so directly and for so long time as the Koreans. Koreans were the second biggest victims of the U.S. A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki next to Japanese as they directly suffered from them. So, A-bomb threat made by the U.S. during the last Korean War was a nightmare in the true sense of the word. This nuclear blackmail resulted in the mass exodus of "A-bomb-driven refugees" from the north to the south in the Korean Peninsula during the war. It was the U.S. that introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula for the first time. In the latter half of the 1950s the U.S. transferred its nuclear weapons to south Korea from Japan. Since then the deployment of U.S. nukes had steadily increased in south Korea, bringing the number of them to over 1,000 in the middle of the 1970s. The U.S. has staged joint military exercises for using those nukes in the actual war of aggression against the DPRK since the late 1960s. Noting that the DPRK has exerted efforts for defusing the U.S. nuclear threat at the three phases, the memorandum says: It worked hard to remove the U.S nuclear threat by means of establishing a nuclear-free zone through peaceful dialogue and negotiation at the first phase and made similar efforts on the strength of international law at the second phase. All these efforts, however, proved futile. The last and only option was to react to "nukes with nukes." The extreme nuclear threat of the U.S. persistently compelled the DPRK to have access to nukes. On January 10, 2003, the DPRK government took such a resolute self-defensive measure as totally pulling out of the NPT by lifting the 10 year-long moratorium on its withdrawal from it. Not bound to the NPT any longer, the DPRK legally and legitimately made a switchover to making all the amount of plutonium obtained in the process of electricity production at the pilot nuclear power plant weapon-grade. In October 2006, three years after it pulled out of the NPT the DPRK conducted the first nuclear test and in May 2009 the second one. This put an end to the nuclear imbalance in Northeast Asia where only the DPRK was left without any nuke whereas other regions had lots of nuclear weapons and were under nuclear umbrellas. The DPRK's access to nukes provided so effective deterrent that the danger of outbreak of a war drastically dwindled on the Korean Peninsula. This represented the efforts exerted by the DPRK to defuse the nuclear threat at the present phase of deterring the U.S. nukes with its own nukes, not making a verbal appeal only. Consistent is the stand of the DPRK government to build a lasting peace regime on the peninsula and denuclearize it, the memorandum says, and continues: The process of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula clarified in the September 19 Joint Statement adopted at the six-party talks in 2005 called for totally eliminating substantial nuclear threats posed to the peninsula from outside in a verifiable manner, thereby turning the whole Korean Peninsula into a nuclear-free zone on that basis. The denuclearization presupposes confidence-building. An earlier conclusion of a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula still in the state of ceasefire would help build confidence needed for denuclearization as early as possible. The mission of the nuclear armed forces of the DPRK is to deter and repulse aggression and attack on the country and the nation till the nuclear weapons are eliminated from the peninsula and the rest of the world. The DPRK has invariably maintained the policy not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or threaten them with nukes as long as they do not join nuclear weapons states in invading or attacking it. The DPRK has a willingness to join the international efforts for nuclear non-proliferation and on nuclear material security on an equal footing with other nuclear weapons states. It will manufacture nukes as much as it deems necessary but will neither participate in nuclear arms race nor produce them more than it feels necessary. It will join the international nuclear disarmament efforts with an equal stand with other nuclear weapons states. The DPRK will as ever make consistent efforts for the denuclearization of the world including the Korean Peninsula, regardless of whether the six-party talks are resumed or not.