North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear state in the constitution, “which no one is allowed to disregard,” said the North Korean number 1 in a speech, as the KCNA news agency reported on Thursday morning.
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“The policy of building nuclear forces of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, editor’s note) has become a permanent basic law of the state,” announced head of state Kim Jong Un, using North Korea’s official acronym.
According to the official agency KCNA, during a session of the People’s Assembly on Tuesday and Wednesday, he added that “no one is allowed to violate the basic law of the state.”
A year ago, North Korea, which has already conducted six nuclear tests from 2006 to 2017, announced a new doctrine that makes its status as a nuclear power “irreversible” and authorizes it to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against its regime in the event of an existential threat.
This legally anchored doctrine also permitted the preventive use of nuclear weapons.
Today, the Assembly went a step further by incorporating this nuclear state status into the Constitution itself.
“This is a historic event that provides strong political influence to significantly strengthen national defense capabilities,” Mr. Kim said, according to KCNA agency.
North Korea has stepped up its weapons tests this year while relations with the United States and its South Korean neighbor remain very strained. Observers fear Pyongyang will conduct a new nuclear test, the seventh in its history and the first since 2017.