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By Micah McCartney
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North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong defended his country’s nuclear weapons program during a rare address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday.
Why It Matters
It was the first time a North Korean official had spoken at the General Assembly since 2018. The following year, denuclearization talks between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed, and tensions on the Korean Peninsula began to spiral again.
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North Korea’s U.N.-sanctioned nuclear weapons program, along with the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, has been a major driver of those tensions and prompted South Korea to deepen defense ties with the U.S. and Japan.
Newsweek reached out to the North Korean embassy in Beijing and to the White House via email for comment.
What To Know
During his 16-minute speech, Kim repeated Pyongyang’s long-standing position that nuclear weapons are essential to its security amid rising aggression from a U.S.-led bloc.
Kim cited the increased scope and pace of U.S. bilateral and multilateral exercises with South Korea and Japan, including simulated nuclear strikes on North Korea, which he said had extremely strained the security environment on the peninsula.
“We will never give up nuclear [weapons], which is our state law, national policy and sovereign power as well as the right to existence,” he said, pointing out the country has enshrined the capability in its constitution. “Doing so would be tantamount to demanding we surrender our sovereignty.”
Only through the North’s “war deterrent,” Kim said, can balance be maintained on the peninsula.
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He also took a moment to praise the U.N.’s work in fighting poverty and disease and supporting sustainable development, while condemning what he called "hegemonic powers” that violate the sovereignty of other nations and their "right to normal development, quite contrary to the spirit of the [U.N.] Charter.”
“The U.N. cannot be represented by a certain individual state or a small group of states,” he said in a thinly veiled criticism of the United States and its allies.
Kim warned the international community now faces “the most turbulent and violent world” since 1945. He called it “imperative” to expand representation of developing countries, which comprise the majority of U.N. members, and to reform the “Western-led” structure of the Security Council. The permanent five members of the council are the U.S., France, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia.
North Korea possesses roughly 50 nuclear warheads, according to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists.
What People Are Saying
Kim Jong Un said during a September 20 address to North Korea's rubberstamp parliament: "Through its uninterrupted, rapid development and threatening demonstration, our nuclear deterrent has proved its capability for, and reliability in, defending the national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the lives and safety of the people from foreign military threats, aggression and attack, steadily increased the security coefficient on the Korean peninsula and in the region, and made the enemy states dread the possible fatal consequences of an emergency."
What Happens Next
During Trump’s summit with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung at the White House in August, the U.S. leader expressed willingness to re-engage with Kim, saying the two leaders shared a “great relationship.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, during a speech in New York last week, said Pyongyang is believed to produce enough nuclear material to build 15 to 20 new warheads each year. Lee also warned a North Korean intercontinental ballistic capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the United States is nearing completion.
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