South says North will never be accepted as nuclear state

The Foreign Ministry said North Korea will never be recognized as a nuclear state, rejecting the country's recent attempts to legitimize its nuclear arsenal...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from left, and Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, second from right, listen to Far Eastern Federal University Rector Boris Korobets, during their visit to the university on Russky Island on Sept. 17. [TASS/YONHAP]

South Korean Foreign Ministry said North Korea will never be recognized as a nuclear state, rejecting the country's recent attempts to legitimize its nuclear arsenal.

“The international community clearly forbids North Korea's nuclear and missile development and provocations,” the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said in its statement Sunday.

“Regardless of North Korea's actions or claims, its possession of nuclear weapons will never be recognized, and international sanctions will further deepen,” it said.

A day earlier, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui tried to legitimize North’s pursuit of nuclear weapons by blaming the United States.

“The DPRK is strengthening the role of its nuclear force in ensuring national security and consolidating its legal and institutional position to cope with the U.S. and its followers' moves of institutionalizing the use of their nuclear weapons against the DPRK and making it their policy,” Choe said in an English-language statement printed by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday.

The DPRK is the acronym for the North’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“No one is entitled to take issue with this independent right of a sovereign state,” she said.

Her remarks followed the North’s adoption of a constitutional amendment last Thursday that tied its nuclear arsenal to the state’s “rights to existence.”

The UN Security Council last Friday held a closed-door meeting to discuss North Korea's nuclear program.

The council has placed nearly a dozen sanctions on the North for its military provocations since 2006, when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, all passed unanimously by the 15-member body.

However, the council has been unable to pass any sanctions on the North since May of last year, when permanent members China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-drafted sanctions resolution.

“The DPRK’s unlawful WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs constitute a threat to international peace and security and the global nonproliferation regime,” said Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department’s spokesperson last Thursday.

Stressing that the only way forward for the North Korean regime is “diplomacy,” Miller said that the U.S. government will continue to work closely with the South Korean and Japanese governments, and other allies and partners to address the North’s “multiple violations of UN Security Council resolutions.”

The Foreign Ministry of North Korea also issued statements to validate the North’s recent engagement with Russia. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was in Russia last month to meet with its president, swapping guns and toasts over largely undisclosed agreements suspected to include arms deals.

“The DPRK-Russia relations are developing onto a new high stage, according to the strategic decision of the top leaders of the two countries,” said the North’s vice foreign minister, Im Chon-il, in a statement issued by KCNA on Sunday.

“They serve as a powerful fortress and strategic stronghold for preserving peace and for deterring the imperialists' highhanded and arbitrary practices, military threats and interference,” the statement quotes Im as saying, seemingly in reference to the United States and its allies.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry in its statement Sunday criticized the North for continuing to “make false and distorted claims by shifting responsibility to external parties,” while ruining the lives of its people and threatening international peace and stability.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]