Kim vows ‘irreversible’ nuclear status

Seoul (AFP) — North Korea will never give up nuclear weapons, leader Kim Jong Un said, indicating that the country will soon designate South Korea the “most hostile state,” state media reported Tuesday.

Kim also told the country’s rubber-stamp legislature in a policy address on Monday that the United States was committing “state terrorism” in an apparent reference to its military attacks on Iran.

“We will continue to firmly consolidate our status as a nuclear-armed state as an irreversible course, while aggressively stepping up our struggle against hostile forces,” Kim told the Supreme People’s Assembly.

“We will, in line with the mission entrusted by the Constitution of the Republic... further expand and advance our self-defensive nuclear deterrent,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

While the United States and Israel have said that their attacks on Iran are to stop the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons — an aim Tehran denies -— Pyongyang’s atomic activities are thought to be light years ahead by comparison.

Despite years of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the Chinese ally is estimated to have dozens of nuclear warheads and the fissile material for many more.

The poor communist country has also unveiled increasingly sophisticated delivery systems, including new solid‑fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that can launch with little warning. It has done six nuclear tests.