PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT MISSION OF DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT MISSION OF DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Pak Gil Yon, Permanent Representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the United Nations said this morning that the issue of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula arose from the massive stockpiling of such arms in the Republic of Korea and the threat they posed to his country as the United States pursued a hostile policy for world supremacy.

Speaking at a Headquarters press conference, he told correspondents that the United States had observed none of the four articles of the 1994 framework agreement with his country and questioned whether Washington had signed that document with the sincere intention of implementing it or simply as a gamble on the eventual collapse of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

Reading the text of a statement released today by his country's Foreign Ministry, Mr. Pak said that the recent visit to Pyongyang by United States envoy James A. Kelly had convinced his country that the “hostile attempt of the Bush administration to stifle the Democratic People's Republic of Korea by force and backpedal the positive developments of the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the rest of North-East Asia has gone to the extremes”.

He said that Mr. Kelly had asserted without evidence that Pyongyang had a uranium-enrichment programme in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and in violation of the framework agreement.  Moreover, the envoy had threatened that unless that programme was halted, there would be no dialogue and that relations between Pyongyang and Seoul as well as between Pyongyang and Japan would be jeopardized.

Quoting the Foreign Ministry statement, Mr. Pak said his country had been stunned by that unilateral and high-handed attitude, adding that its inclusion as part of an “axis of evil”, and its citing as a target for a preemptive nuclear strike was a clear declaration of war.  Pyongyang had made clear to the envoy that it felt entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons, but “any type of weapon more powerful than that” to defend its sovereignty and right to existence.

However, he went on, Pyongyang remained ready to seek a negotiated settlement of the issue provided that the United States recognized the sovereignty of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; made an assurance of non-aggression; and refrained from interfering in the country's economic development.

Responding to a question about Pyongyang's justification for a nuclear weapons programme, given that the NPT prohibited it from developing nuclear weapons, Mr. Pak said that the non-nuclear-weapons countries had agreed that the treaty was only valid if the nuclear-weapons-States did not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against them.  Thus, the United States was in violation of the NPT.

Asked whether his country and the United States were in a state of war, he referred the questioner to the Foreign Ministry statement, but pointed out that

the Democratic People's Republic of Korea would always prefer to negotiate.  Though it was a peaceful and small nation, it would defend its sovereignty and right to existence if it had to.

Clarifying the meaning of the phrase "weapons more powerful than nuclear weapons", he said that in view of the high-handed and unilateral demand by the United States, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had asserted that it was entitled to possess “such a weapon more powerful than that of nuclear weapons based on enriched uranium”.

Asked why Pyongyang expected other governments to see the Foreign Ministry statement as anything other than blackmail, given its emphasis on the right to possess such weapons, Mr. Pak reiterated that his country was a small one that needed to defend its sovereignty and right to existence, adding that nobody should believe allegations of blackmail.  Was the list published by the United States, detailing countries against which preemptive nuclear attacks were intended, not a violation of the spirit of the NPT? he asked in turn.

In conclusion, he said he was not in a position to provide answers regarding his country’s uranium-enrichment programme, whether it possessed nuclear weapons and how many, how advanced its uranium-enrichment programme was and where the uranium had originally come from.

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