The prerequisite for peace and stability on Korean Peninsula

By the Institute for Disarmament and Peace of the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

Seventy years have elapsed since the bursts of gunfire of war were heard on this land.

The Korean War forced by the United States inflicted painful scars and tremendous human and material losses upon the Korean people. Continuing into this moment is the suffering of national division whereby kinsfolk of the same blood are compelled to live apart.

As the Korean nation still suffers from the heartrending wounds of war, it is stronger than any other nation in respect of its cherished desire to live on a peaceful land without war, and has long persevered in its efforts to realize the desire, but in vain.

Its underlying cause is the sinister design, that is, the U.S. hostile policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The Institute for Disarmament and Peace, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK Thursday releases this paper with a view to lay bare before the whole world the truth behind the Korean War ignited by the U.S. in the 1950s of the last century and to reveal the aggressive and predatory nature of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK, which imposes immeasurable misfortunes and pains on the entire Korean nation.

The Korean War was an inevitable product of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK

The Korean War is a criminal war of aggression which was systematically prepared and provoked by the U.S. under thoroughgoing plans to stifle the DPRK by force of arms and hold in its hands the Asia and the rest of the world.

Even though the U.S. continues to fabricate all sorts of tricky information designed to cover up its aggressive crimes of having provoked the Korean War, the truth of history can neither be covered up nor obliterated.

Since more than one century ago, the U.S. adopted it as its state policy to invade and dominate Korea, a gateway to the Asian continent, and desperately pursued the hostile policy towards Korea for its implementation.

The U.S. ruling circles presented the “proposal on opening Korea” to the Congress in February 1845 and perpetrated a series of incidents such as intrusions of ship “General Sherman” in 1866, ship “Shenandoah” and ship “China” respectively in 1868, and large-scale armed invasion in 1871.

After signing the “Taft-Katsura Agreement” in 1905, the U.S. backed the occupation and colonial rule by Japan over Korea while systematically attempting to turn it into its eventual colony. By the end of the World War II, it perfected its plan to occupy our country.

In the letter sent in March 1951 to Joseph Martin, Senator of the U.S. Congress, MacArthur, the then Commander of the U.S. Forces in the Far East, wrote: “If we lose this war to Communism in Asia, the fall of Europe is inevitable. By conquering all of Korea we can cut into pieces the one and only supply line connecting Soviet Siberia and South …, and control the whole area between Vladivostok and Singapore. Nothing would then be beyond the reach of our power.” (Herschel Meyer, “Modern History of America”, p.148)

In a word, the U.S. regarded Korea as a “dagger” to cut off a “lump of meat” which meant Asia.

Korean War was badly needed for the American munition monopolies which had been too fattened by piles of money they had amassed during the World War II.

The economic crisis which had started in the U.S. from the end of 1948 became more acute by 1949.

The industrial production plummeted by 15 percent compared to the previous year, the prices nose-dived, and the investment in machinery and equipment reduced sharply, which resulted in the bankruptcy of over 4,600 companies and the increase of the unemployed to 6 million during the first half of year 1949 alone. The revenue of the monopolies shrunk from US$ 36.6 billion to US$ 28.4 billion during the period between September 1948 and March 1949.

Soon after the Korean War broke out, American publications headlined that “the business called Korea revived the economy” and “the outbreak of the Korean War exorcised the evil of recession that had been agonizing the American commerce since the end of the World War II.” This fact speaks itself that a “special recipe”, i.e. a war, was needed for the U.S. at that time in order to rid itself of the economic crisis.

This is how the U.S. chose, pursuant to its strategy for world hegemony, Korea as a “unique point of tangency between the American military system and the Asian mainland”, an “ideological battleground”, a “test ground” of showdown for realizing world domination, and also as the only way to get out of the economic crisis after the World War II.

The true aggressive colours of the U.S. who took the lead in preparing for the Korean War are also clearly revealed by working out the war scenario.

The plan of the U.S. to occupy Far East was divided into three phases: The first phase begins with the Korean War (A) and in the second phase the war is expanded into China (B) and in the final phase, Siberia is occupied (C). The start of operation was slated for 1949.

A Japanese magazine dated September 1964 disclosed the story behind the scene by citing a former colonel of the Imperial Japanese Army, who had been involved in this conspiracy for the war, as follows: “The operation was divided into three phases. First, 10 divisions comprising the U.S. Army and south Korean Army are deployed along the 38th Parallel, and two operation zones, i.e. the east zone and the west zone are formed. The west front directly advances to Pyongyang and a landing operation at northern Pyongyang with the cooperation of the Navy and Air Forces is conducted in parallel with it. The east front chooses Yangdok as its left flank and ensures the connection between Pyongyang and Wonsan and its right flank will march directly towards Wonsan. Here again, a landing operation at northern Wonsan is conducted by a naval unit. These two fronts advance together up to River Amnok and break through the Sino-Korean border. This was the first phase of the operation and a detailed plan based on data provided by the former Japanese Army was worked out. Next, the operation enters the second phase the moment the Sino-Korean border is broken through, followed by participation of the Japanese army and the UN forces. This was the sequence.”

With a thoroughgoing plan and concrete preparation, the U.S. at last ignited the Korean War by inciting the south Korean puppet army at 4 a.m., June 25, 1950.

On the eve of the war, Robert, the then head of the U.S. military advisory group in south Korea gabbled as follows: “We have chosen the 25th and this explains our prudence. It is Sunday. It’s the Sabbath for both the United States and south Korea, Christian states. No one will believe we have started a war on Sunday. In short, it is to make people believe that we are not the first to open a war.”

After the provocation of the Korean War, the U.S. manoeuvred cunningly to cover up its true colour as aggressors.

On June 25, the U.S. asked for convening the United Nations Security Council meeting, and forged the UNSC “resolution” 82 which designated the DPRK as “aggressor” and on July 7, it forged yet another UNSC “resolution” 84 which “recommended” to make the allied forces available to “a unified command under the U.S.” and “asked” the U.S. to designate its commander and “authorized” the usage of UN flag.

The DPRK was thus termed a “provoker” of the war and the Fatherland Liberation War of the Korean people an “aggression”, and the “UN forces” made an appearance as a belligerent party to the war.

The previous UN Secretary-Generals officially admitted that the “UN Command” is not a UN-controlled organ but purely a war tool of the U.S.

In June 1994, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then UN Secretary-General, admitted that “the UNSC did not establish the ‘Unified Command’ as a subsidiary organ under its control and it became to be placed under the authority of the U.S.” (June 24, 1994 Letter from the UN Secretary-General to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK).

In December 1998, Kofi A. Annan, the then UN Secretary-General, said that “none of my predecessors have granted any authorization to any State to make the use of the name of the UN” when he had referred to the forces and command dispatched by the U.S. into the Korean War. (December 21, 1998, Letter from the UN Secretary-General to the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK)

On July 27, 2004 and March 6, 2006, the UN spokesperson confirmed that the “‘UN Command’, despite its name, is not the army of UN, but a U.S.-led force.”

It is not the UN but the U.S. which has the power to appoint the “UN commander.” It is not the UN but the U.S. administration which has absolute power to decide on either reduction or increase of the U.S. forces in south Korea that are wearing the helmets of the “UN forces.”

Despite all these facts, the UN flag is still brazenly hanging in Panmunjom, which is the shame on the part of the United Nations.

This fiercest war ended in the miraculous victory of the heroic Korean people who were under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung. Yet the human and material losses suffered by our nation were indeed tremendous.

The nefarious atrocities of massacre committed by the U.S. imperialists in particular cannot be detailed on this short paper.

The U.S. imperialists, who had wormed into Sinchon County in October 1950, committed all kinds of atrocities of massacre against 35,380-strong innocent residents, equivalent to 25% of the County’s population, in 50-plus days. They burnt the innocent residents to death, drowned them in reservoir, shot to death, burnt them on the firewood, ripped apart the limbs of living persons and cut off the abdomens of pregnant women. These facts lay bare before the world that the U.S. imperialists are no less than wild beasts and bloodthirsty wolves in human shape.

According to an official statistics alone, the U.S. imperialists, during the Korean War, killed more than 1.23 million people in the northern half of Korea and more than 1.24 million people in south Korea, and attempted to eliminate our nation by mobilizing even the chemical and germ weapons.

In 1951, an investigation team of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, which investigated the atrocities of the U.S. imperialists on the site, wrote in its report: “The massacres and tortures committed by the U.S. troops in the areas of their temporary occupation are more atrocious than those committed by Hitler Nazis in Europe.”

Openly clamouring that they would “wipe out 78 cities and towns of north Korea from the map” and “leave nothing intact”, the U.S., throughout the Korean War, dropped almost 600,000 tons of bombs and napalm on the northern half of Korea, which are 3.7 times the amount of bombs dropped on the Japanese mainland during the Pacific War.

Severely destroyed owing to the atrocities of the U.S. imperialists during the Korean War were 50,941 factories and enterprises, 28,632 buildings of schools at all levels, 4,534 buildings of medical facilities including hospitals and clinics, 579 buildings of scientific research institutions, 8,163 buildings of press and culture organs, 2,077,226 dwelling houses. Also 563,755 hectares of farming land got damaged, and the total reduced area of paddy and non-paddy fields amounted to 155,500 hectares.

When the war was over, there was nothing left but ashes, and the U.S. bragged that Korea would not recover even after 100 years.

All these facts eloquently show that the U.S. imperialists are the very provokers of the Korean War and the sworn enemy of the Korean people, and prove that peace will never settle on the Korean peninsula as long as the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK persists.

Criminal Acts of U.S. – Systematic Abolition of Armistice Agreement

The U.S. hostile manoeuvres towards the DPRK after the Korean War can be characterized in a word as a pursuit of permanent division of the Korean peninsula and ceaseless nuclear threats and blackmail against the DPRK.

The Korean War, which Truman, a war chieftain, described as no less than the World War III, came to a pause with the conclusion of the Armistice Agreement. But it meant neither the end of war nor the conclusion of a peace agreement.

The Armistice Agreement, at the time of its conclusion, constituted no more than a transitional step aimed at withdrawing all foreign troops from the Korean peninsula and establishing lasting peace on it.

No sooner had the Armistice Agreement been signed than the U.S. drove the situation of the Korean peninsula to the brink of war in a flagrant violation of the Armistice Agreement, driven by its wild ambition to make our people its slaves by all means and seize the whole of Korean peninsula.

Around 22:20 p.m. on July 27, 1953, less than half an hour after the Armistice Agreement became effective, the U.S. army fired several machine gun shots towards our side’s area and since then, fired shells into our side’s area successively for several hours at intervals of tens of minutes.

In disregard of the Paragraph 10, Article I of the Armistice Agreement which stipulates that only pistols and rifles can be carried in Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) including the Joint Security Area (JSA), the U.S. army introduced automatic rifles and machine guns and, moreover, cannons, tanks, flame throwers, helicopters etc., and opened gunfire towards our side’s posts and guardsmen indiscriminately almost every day.

Since 1968, the U.S. army mobilized the fully armed troops to repeat the military operations which it had once conducted in the areas along the 38th parallel including Mountain Songak just before the provocation of June 25 War.

The U.S. army committed innumerable acts of provocation in Panmunjom JSA, including Panmunjom incident on August 18, 1976 and the incident of gunfire towards our security personnel on November 23, 1984.

The U.S. nullified Paragraph 60, Article IV of the Armistice Agreement which envisages the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and the peaceful settlement of the Korean question.

Paragraph 60 of the Armistice Agreement stipulated that within three months after the Armistice Agreement becomes effective a political conference of a higher level is to be held to negotiate the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the Korean peninsula and the ways for peaceful settlement of the Korean question.

At the preparatory talks for a political conference that were convened at Panmunjom on October 26, 1953, the U.S. laid artificial obstacles, only clinging to the obstructive manoeuvres, and on December 12 same year, it unilaterally withdrew from the meeting room. Thus the talks didn’t proceed to the main conference, but was ruptured in the preparatory stage.

Afterwards, the Geneva Conference was convened for the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, but the U.S. deliberately disrupted the conference.

On August 8, 1953, the U.S. staged the ceremony of signing of what is called a “Mutual Defence Treaty” with south Korea in order to legitimize permanent stationing of U.S. troops in south Korea.

On January 2, 1955, the then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff made reckless remarks that the U.S. army would station, for an indefinite period, in south Korea which is of great strategic significance in its world hegemony, and that it would continue to hinder the peaceful coordination of the Korean question.

After the UN resolution on dissolution of the “UN Command” for the durable peace on the Korean peninsula was adopted at the 30th session of the UN General Assembly in November 1975, the U.S. clinged more openly to its scheme for the permanent occupation by cooking up the U.S.-south Korea “Combined Forces Command.”

In early March 2006, the U.S. worked out the plan and got down to its implementation for expanding and reorganizing the nominal “UN Command” into a permanent organization of multinational forces by way of increasing the role of belligerent states of the Korean War and permitting them to take part not only in the formulation of emergency and operational plans but also in detailed activities.

Thus, the process for converting the Armistice Agreement into a peace agreement miscarried, and the unstable state of neither war nor peace continues on the Korean peninsula.

In August 1953 the U.S. went totally against Sub-paragraph 13(b), Article II of the Armistice Agreement and unilaterally drew the “northern limit line” in the West Sea of Korea, which is an act of illegal and outrageous crime, thereby transforming its surrounding areas into the world’s most dangerous hotspot. It is also attempting in every way to impose a blockade on our country under the pretext of “Proliferation Security Initiative”, running counter to Paragraph 15, Article II which prohibits any kind of blockade against the DPRK.

The U.S. nullified Sub-paragraph 13(d), Article II of the Armistice Agreement which called for a complete cessation of introduction of all military materiel from outside of the Korean territory and turned south Korea into a world’s weapons exhibition hall.

The U.S. incessantly threatened and blackmailed the Inspection Teams of Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission which were mandated according to Sub-paragraph 13(c), Article II of the Armistice Agreement to supervise and inspect the introductions of military materiel from outside of the Korean territory, and eventually expelled them from south Korea in June 1956, thereby paralyzing their inspection functions.

In May 1957, the then U.S. State Secretary openly stated in public that “the U.S. should consider sending more modern and effective weapons to south Korea,” and on June 21 same year, the U.S. Army side that attended the 75th meeting of the Military Armistice Commission(MAC) announced its unilateral abrogation of Sub-paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice Agreement.

The U.S. shipped into south Korea more than 1,000 nuclear weapons during the period between the late 1950s and the 1980s. As a result, south Korea was converted into the most highly deployed area of nuclear weapons in the world, their number being over 4 times that of “NATO” member states, and into an advanced outpost for outbreak of a nuclear war. The U.S. also formalized the provision of nuclear umbrella to south Korea at the 14th session of the U.S.-south Korea Annual Security Consultative Meeting held in March 1982.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the U.S. designated our country as a target for preemptive nuclear strike in its “Nuclear Posture Review” and shipped into south Korea the warfare equipment worth an astronomical amount of money, along with nuclear weaponry.

The U.S. deployed in south Korea all sorts of ultra-modern offensive arms such as “F-117” stealth fighter, “F-15” and “F-16” fighters, “Shadow 200” tactical reconnaissance drones, Apache, new-type “Patriot” missiles, “Stryker” armored vehicles, guided missile destroyers, “Abrams M1-A2” tanks, “ATACMS” ground to ground missiles, Mine-Removing Armor-Protected(MRAP) special vehicles, and even introduced the THAAD system.

And recently, the U.S. introduced to south Korea “F-35A” stealth fighters, “Global Hawk” high-altitude reconnaissance drones, AWACS and many other ultra-modern offensive weapons, thus transforming south Korea into literally a showcase of lethal weapons.

The U.S. went to the length of abolishing the MAC and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), the only remaining supervisory bodies for implementing the Armistice Agreement.

In the 1950s, it dissolved the Neutral Nations Inspection Teams under the NNSC and the Joint Observer Team under the MAC which were provided for by Paragraph 23, Article II of the Armistice Agreement. On March 25, 1991, it staged a farce of designating as a senior member of the U.S. Army side to the MAC a puppet army officer of south Korea which is not a signatory to the Armistice Agreement and therefore does not have any qualifications or authority to handle issues relating to the Armistice Agreement.

With this, the MAC, which had functioned for more than four decades, ceased its existence, and the NNSC, too, having lost its counterpart, withered away by itself.

The U.S. also abrogated the Preamble and the Paragraph 12 of the Armistice Agreement, which provides for a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea.

Since 1954, when it staged “Focus Lens”, the first joint military exercise with south Korea, the U.S. has ceaselessly conducted all kinds of war drills so far, to include “Freedom Bolt”, “Team Spirit”, “Ulji Focus Lens”, “Joint Wartime Reinforcement Exercise”, “Key Resolve”, “Foal Eagle” and “Ulji Freedom Guardian.”

These exercises far exceeded any other war exercises taking place in different regions of the world in terms of frequency and scope, and all of strategic nuclear triad such as nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and nuclear strategic bombers were mobilized in its nuclear war drills aimed at the DPRK.

The nature of the exercises became more aggressive and provocative by changing their masquerades into “decapitation operation”, “precision strike”, “invasion of Pyongyang”, etc. throwing off the “annual” and “defensive” veneer.

The pre-emptive nuclear strike scenarios were further specified into “OPLAN 5026”, “OPLAN 5027”, “OPLAN 5029”, “OPLAN 5030”, “OPLAN 5012”, “OPLAN 5015”, “OPLAN 8044”, “OPLAN 8022”, “OPLAN 8010”, “tailored deterrence strategy” and “OPLAN 4D.”

As is evident from the above, the U.S. left no stone unturned in abrogating each and every article and paragraph of the Armistice Agreement which consists of 5 Articles and 63 Paragraphs in total and as a consequence, the Armistice Agreement was dumped like a scrap of waste paper.

Owing to the hostile policy of the U.S. and its endless nuclear threats and blackmail towards the DPRK, the Korean peninsula has turned into the world’s hottest spot, where a nuclear war could spark off at any moment.

If we had not considerably strengthened our self-defensive deterrence, the Korean peninsula would have fallen into the ravages of war more than hundreds times and a catastrophic third world war would have already started.

Strengthening the war deterrent is our final option.

It is 67 years since the gunfire of war ceased on this land. But, there is one thing that has not ceased at all.

It is none other than the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK.

The United States is becoming ever more undisguised day by day in its scheme to annihilate the DPRK by force and gain military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region and, by extension, to realize its ambition for world hegemony at any cost.

The government of the DPRK put forward a number of peace proposals and initiatives including the proposal (1970s) for concluding a DPRK-U.S. peace agreement and the proposal (1990s) for establishing a new peace mechanism, all of which were rejected outright by the U.S.

In the second half of 1990s, the four-party talks were held involving the DPRK, the U.S., China and south Korea for an establishment of durable peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula, but owing to the insincere attitude from the U.S., no fruit was produced.

In the new century, we put forward the proposal for bringing earlier a declaration on an end to the war and the proposal for convening a meeting at the earliest possible date for replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement by 2010, 60th year of the outbreak of the Korean war. But the United States turned down all of those proposals.

Instead, the U.S. openly designated our country as “axis of evil”, “outpost of tyranny” and “target of pre-emptive nuclear strike” and illegally labelled us as “sponsor of terrorism”, “proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”, “human rights abuse”, “money laundering”, “counterfeiting”, “drug trafficking” in order to justify its hostile policy towards the DPRK.

It did not even hesitate to make reckless remarks of “total destruction” of the DPRK and run amuck in order to overturn our ideology and system.

The hostile policy of the U.S. towards the DPRK is well evidenced by the fact that it posed nuclear threats to us, openly talking about using nuclear weapons.

The U.S. had openly stated that it would drop atomic bombs on the DPRK during the Korean War, and gradually escalated its nuclear threats against us after the conclusion of the Armistice Agreement.

When its armed spy ship “Pueblo” was captured in January 1968, the U.S. reviewed the option of nuclear attack against us, and when the large-size reconnaissance plane “EC-121” was shot down in our territorial airspace in April 1969, it kept the nukes-mounted tactical bombers on emergency standby while the then U.S. President Nixon made reckless remarks that he decided to approve the use of atomic bombs in case north Korea strikes back. Such nuclear threats and blackmail by the U.S. on the DPRK are only the visible tip of iceberg.

The war in Kosovo triggered by the U.S. from March to June 1999 was a war of injustice, simulating a second Korean war.

The former Yugoslavia served as the U.S. test ground for a new Korean war, because the country has the natural and geographical conditions similar to the Korean peninsula and its distance from the U.S. mainland is almost same as the distance between the U.S. mainland and the Korean peninsula.

The facts that the U.S. together with NATO conducted ceaseless and indiscriminate air raids of zero operational significance and ruthlessly used depleted uranium bombs and WMDs that spread toxic bacteria, serve as an oblique scene of the second Korean war being plotted by the U.S.

With the turn of a new millennium, the nuclear threats by the U.S. against the DPRK became ever more blatant.

On June 6, 2001, Bush announced a so-called “North Korea Policy Statement” where he claimed that the U.S. would wield its military strength including nuclear weapons if the DPRK does not accept its demand of nuclear inspection, suspension of development and launch of missiles, and reduction of conventional weapons.

In 2002, the U.S. stated that it could be the first to use nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and it will develop small-size nuclear bunker busters to this end, thereby making its preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK a fait accompli.

In 2009, at the 41st session of the U.S.-south Korea Annual Security Consultative Meeting, it announced in writing that it would provide extended deterrence such as nuclear umbrella, conventional strike capabilities and missile defense system to south Korea.

The American nuclear threats against the DPRK reached its peak in the year 2017.

The U.S. pushed the Korean peninsula onto the threshold of a nuclear war by deploying nuclear strategic assets and the latest warfare equipment including the super-large nuclear-powered aircraft carriers “Carl Vinson” and “Ronald Reagan”, nuclear strategic bombers “B-1B”, “B-52H” and “B-2A”, nuclear-powered submarines “Columbus”, “Tucson” and “Michigan” in south Korea and its surrounding areas.

The U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threats against the DPRK became further aggressive after the DPRK-U.S. Summit held in Singapore for establishing a new bilateral relationship and building a lasting and durable peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula.

Despite the fact that we voluntarily took crucial and meaningful initiatives including the discontinuation of nuclear test and ICBM test-fire for the sake of building a mutual confidence, the U.S., far from responding to these initiatives with corresponding measures, conducted tens of joint military drills, which its President personally promised to stop, and threatened the DPRK militarily by way of shipping into south Korea the ultra-modern warfare equipment.

The U.S. conducted a test simulating the interception of our intercontinental ballistic missile, followed by test launches, without hesitation, of all kinds of missiles including ICBM “Minuteman-3” and SLBM “Trident 2D-5”, thus maximizing the nuclear threats against us.

Even amid the unprecedented crisis triggered by COVID-19, the military threats of the U.S. against us have not been abated at all. If anything, it staged a joint air drill and marine corps joint landing drill in April this year.

No other nation on this planet has so directly suffered from nuclear threats for so long as the Korean nation, and to our people, nuclear threat is not at all an abstract concept but actual and concrete experience.

Our nation suffered directly from the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and our nation is the second largest victim after the Japanese people.

To our people, who personally experienced the horrible ravages of nuclear bomb, the atomic bomb threat of the U.S. during the Korean War was literally a nightmare, and a procession of “A-bomb refugees” streaming from the north to the south appeared on the Korean peninsula in the period of the Korean War.

Many families who couldn’t move together sent only their husbands or sons to the south in hopes of carrying on their family lines.

This is how the separated families of millions of people came into being, and they still live separately in the north and south of the Korean peninsula and abroad.

In order to eliminate the nuclear threats from the U.S., the DPRK government made all possible efforts either through dialogue or in resort to the international law, but all ended in vain.

The option left was only one, and that was to counter nuclear with nuclear.

This brought to an end the nuclear imbalance in the Northeast Asia, where the DPRK only had been left without nukes and all other countries had been equipped with nuclear weapons or nuclear umbrella.

All these speak clearly to the fact that the root cause of aggravation of the situation on the Korean peninsula lies in the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threats towards the DPRK and the dark cloud of a nuclear war can never be cleared away from the Korean peninsula unless the U.S. withdraws its hostile policy that treats the DPRK as an enemy and a belligerent state.

The U.S. might have its own calculations in keeping the dogged persistence of its hostile concept towards the DPRK and continuing the belligerent relations with the DPRK.

While the Far Eastern strategy of the U.S. had been shifting to “Nixon doctrine”, “Neo-Pacific doctrine”, Pivot to Asia-Pacific strategy and Indo-Pacific strategy, the environment surrounding the ceasefire on the Korean peninsula was abused to militarily deter the potential adversaries of the U.S.

In recent years alone, the U.S. deployed the high-altitude missile defence system “THAAD” in south Korea under the pretext of “missile threat” from us, thus making it possible to watch over the northeastern areas of China and the far eastern region of Russia like seeing the palm of its hand, and the U.S. is also openly releasing its evil intention to deploy intermediate-range missiles in our surrounding areas on the ground that the INF Treaty has become null and void.

As a result, it has now become a matter of time when a nuclear arms race starts around the Korean peninsula, and the U.S. military moves to contain China and Russia are bound to grow more pronounced as time goes by.

Under this circumstance, there is no guarantee that a second June 25 won’t be repeated in case the U.S. interests coincide with the ones of 70 years ago – a far departure from being interested in keeping the armistice on the Korean peninsula.

To our people who were subjected to disastrous disturbances of war on this land owing to the U.S., the strong war deterrent for national defence came to stand out as an indispensable strategic option.

It is an indisputable, open and above-board exercise of the legitimate right to self-defence that we further consolidate the war deterrent for defending the national security and guaranteeing our development.

The 70-year-long history of the DPRK-U.S. confrontation is graphically showing that any self-restraint or broad-mindedness would not serve to contain the U.S. high-handedness and arbitrariness, aggression and war manoeuvres, but would encourage them instead.

It is no less than the despicable double-dealing tactics for the U.S. to talk about a sort of dialogue while maximizing its attempts to oppress the DPRK politically, economically and militarily, and its repeated harping, like an automatic responding machine, on denuclearization betrays only its brigandish intention to disarm us and open up the way to an aggression war.

At the Fourth Enlarged Meeting of the 7th Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Comrade Kim Jong Un, chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK, set forth new policies to further bolster the national nuclear war deterrent and operate the strategic force on full alert in accordance with the overall requirements for building and developing state armed forces.

Under the condition where the U.S., the biggest nuclear power and the only user of nuclear weapons, clings to the pathological and inveterate hostile policy towards us, while indulging itself in extreme nuclear threats and blackmail, we will continue to further build up our strength to contain the persistent nuclear threats from the U.S. and we will never shrink from this road we have chosen.

Nobody in this world could block the victorious advance of our people and army who have inherited the heroic spirit and mettle of the great generation of victors that had defeated the U.S.-led gang of imperialists in the Fatherland Liberation War – a de facto confrontation between a rifle and an atomic bomb.

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