North Korea says US must accept its status as a nuclear weapons state

North Korean leader’s powerful sister says talks aimed at denuclearisation would be interpreted as a ‘mockery’.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister has called on the United States to accept North Korea’s “irreversible” status as a nuclear weapons state, warning that dialogue will never lead to its denuclearisation.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong said a recognition that Pyongyang’s capabilities and the geopolitical environment had “radically changed” should be a prerequisite for “everything in the future”.

“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state, which was established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people, will be thoroughly rejected,” Kim said, using the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.