North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reaffirmed his country's "invariable" stance on ensuring security through its nuclear forces
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SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reaffirmed his country's "invariable" stance on ensuring security through its nuclear forces, highlighting steady preparations for its nuclear counteraction as an "essential top-priority" task, state media reported Saturday.
Kim made the remarks Friday, when he met nuclear scientists and technicians, and presided over a key consultative meeting on the production of nuclear materials and weapons, Yonhap news agency reported quoting the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
His message came after US President Donald Trump's administration reaffirmed its commitment to the "complete" denuclearization of North Korea.
At Friday's meeting, he stressed that making steady preparations for advancing the country's nuclear posture is an "essential top-priority task," calling it an "unchangeable duty."
"The powerful deterrent, namely, the logic of peacekeeping and security by force with nuclear forces as its backbone, is the invariable stand of the DPRK," Kim was quoted as saying. DPRK is short for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
He also called for strengthening the "nuclear shield and sword" to reliably defend the country's sovereignty.
Kim expressed his satisfaction that "the main links in highly developing the country's nuclear capability were perfectly solved" as the nuclear weapons institute and officials from the nuclear-material production field carried out "two tasks" related to a new important nuclear strategy, the KCNA said.
It did not elaborate on what those tasks were.
The latest meeting was attended by Hong Sung-mu, a key senior party official believed to have spearheaded North Korea's nuclear program.
In a recent speech at a key parliamentary meeting, the North's leader said Pyongyang is open to talks with the United States if Washington drops its demand for the North's denuclearisation.
But he also made it clear that North Korea will never give up nuclear arms, stressing that the North's "irreversible" status as a nuclear power is enshrined in the country's constitution.
Citing assessments by experts, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Thursday that North Korea is presumed to possess up to 2,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. He also said the North is believed to be running uranium centrifuges at four different locations to accumulate nuclear materials.