Nuclear deterrence will guarantee national security, DPRK leader says

PYONGYANG－Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has stressed the importance of nuclear deterrence on the 67th anniversary of an armistice that ended the hot war in the Korean War (1950-53), the official Korean Central News Agency said on Tuesday.

At the 6th National Conference of War Veterans held in Pyongyang on Monday, Kim said thanks to the "reliable and effective self-defense war deterrence, there will no longer be war on this land and our national security and future will be firmly guaranteed permanently", the KCNA reported.

"Bearing in mind that we should have a strong power to safeguard the fate of our country and people, we will never stop honing the most powerful national defense capacity that cannot be matched by anyone else," Kim was quoted by the KCNA as saying.

The country developed nuclear weapons to win "absolute strength "to stave off another armed conflict, Kim said, emphasizing the defensive nature of the programs.

"Now we are capable of defending ourselves in the face of any form of high intensity pressure and military threats from imperialist and hostile forces," he said.

The speech followed recent remarks by both DPRK and US officials suggesting they were reluctant to engage in a new round of diplomacy on Pyongyang's nuclear program anytime soon.

Engagement ruled out

Kim and US President Donald Trump met for the first time in 2018 in Singapore, raising hopes for peace on the Korean Peninsula. But their second summit in 2019 in Vietnam ended without agreement.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said Trump would only want to engage with Kim if there were real prospects of progress. Kim's sister and senior ruling party official, Kim Yo-jong, said a new summit would be "unpractical" for the DPRK and that Pyongyang won't gift Trump a high-level meeting that he can boast as a foreign policy achievement.

Kim Jong-un entered this year with a vow to bolster the country's nuclear program and threatened to unveil a new "strategic" weapon.

During the conference, the top leader also paid tribute to the martyrs and war veterans who "dedicated their valuable lives to the sacred war for the country's reunification and independence and people's freedom and happiness", the KCNA said.

The DPRK held its first National Conference of War Veterans in 1993, marking the 40th anniversary of the armistice. The following four conferences in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018 were all held after Kim Jongun took office in 2011.

Xinhua - Agencies