North Korea enacts law allowing preemptive nuclear strikes

Seoul, Sep 9 (EFE).- North Korea enacted a law that makes its nuclear policy “irreversible” and allows it to carry out pre-emptive strikes if its government or nuclear arsenal is threatened, state media reported Friday.

The new law, approved Thursday during the second plenary session the country’s rubber-stamped parliament has been holding this week, allows an “immediate” nuclear strike if the national command center or its nuclear arsenal are in danger, according to state news agency KCNA.

“We will never give up nuclear weapons and there is absolutely no denuclearization, no negotiations and no bargaining chips in the process,” leader Kim Jong-un said during a parliament speech, according to KCNA.

Kim accused the United States of trying to overthrow the North Korean regime by pressuring it through sanctions to abandon its nuclear weapons and development, calling Washington’s approach “an error of judgment and miscalculation” that will have neither effect nor “in hundreds of years.”

Pyongyang’s nuclear policy reform is “a legal demand of the current situation” that will serve as a guarantee to strengthen the position as a nuclear state of the North, Kim said.

The North Korean leader said that for there to be any change in his nuclear policy, a change in the political and military situation on the Korean peninsula and globally would be necessary.

North Korea has kept its borders closed since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and has rejected offers of dialog made by Seoul and Washington since.

North Korea approved a five-year weapons modernization plan that has led to about 20 projectile launches this year and that seems to be behind the preparations for a new nuclear test detected by satellite images this year.

If it takes place, it would be Pyongyang’s first atomic test in five years and which, according to South Korean and US intelligence, has been ready for months to be carried out. EFE

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