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By Micah McCartney
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North Korea struck a defiant tone at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, with its representative saying the country would not give up its nuclear weapons or change its diplomatic tack for any U.S. president.
Republican candidate Donald Trump in 2018 made history as the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader to resume stalled talks on denuclearization, though they failed to bear significant fruit. Trump has portrayed himself as best suited to deal with Kim Jong Un, in July suggesting the 40-year-old leader "misses" him.
Vice President Kamala Harris sought to draw a contrast with her opponent. When accepting the Democratic Party nomination in August, she pledged not to cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim who are rooting for Trump.
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"Whoever takes office in the U.S., we will only deal with the state entity called
the U.S., not the mere administration," Song Kim, Pyongyang's representative to the U.N., told the assembly. "Likewise, any U.S. administration will have to face the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], which is different from what the U.S. used to think," Song added, using North Korea's official name.
He went on to blast Washington and Seoul's "anti-DPRK nuclear war machine," cooperation and frequent joint military drills for "heightened military tension" on the peninsula.
He also rebuked extra-regional NATO partners in the region for "stirring up military confrontation further by deploying warships and aircraft in the hotspot region of the Korean Peninsula," in an apparent reference to countries participating in enforcing U.N. Security Council embargoes on nuclear ad ballistic missile programs.
Song added that it was seven decades of U.S. hostility that prompted the communist country to acquire nuclear weapons, which "were just made and exist to defend ourselves."
"When it comes to national prestige, we will never bargain over it with anyone for it was gained through the bloody struggle of the entire Korean people," he vowed.
Newsweek reached out to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, China, with a written request for comment.
"Anyone who's visited the South-North border at the Demilitarized Zone, which is only about 30 miles from downtown Seoul, knows North Korea doesn't need nukes to ward off an invasion," Sean King, an Asia scholar and senior vice president of New York-based consultancy Park Strategies, told Newsweek. "Pyongyang's vast, forward-deployed artillery would pulverize the South Korean capital within the opening seconds of any conflict."
King added: "If the U.S. were interested in invading the North, why then did we not do so before the Kim regime got nukes?"
He concluded that Kim's nuclear arsenal is intended to keep the U.S. at bay in the event of a new war against the South. "Perhaps he's gambling we wouldn't sacrifice San Francisco or Seattle for Seoul."
According to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, North Korea had a stockpile of roughly 50 nuclear warheads as of January and enough fissile material to produce as many as 90.
Last month, North Korean state media released photos of what appeared to be a long-suspected second uranium enrichment site.
During a confirmation hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 17, President Joe Biden's now-confirmed nominee for commander of U.S. Forces Korea, Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson, called Pyongyang's ambition to ramp up nuclear weapons production is "the single greatest challenge facing the tri-commands."
The tri-commands, which include U.S. Forces Korea, United Nations Command and the U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command, coordinate defense operations and enforce the armistice that ended active hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in 1953.
Update 10/2/24, 9 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a comment from Sean King.
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