North Korea “No Intention of Exporting Nuclear Weapon”

North Korea announced Wednesday that it had no intention of exporting it’s nuclear weapons, proclaiming again that it possessed and strengthened its ‘nuclear deterrent force’ as a means for self-defense.

“We have no intention of transferring our ‘nuclear deterrent force’ to other countries,” said North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choi Soo-heon, who is visiting New York to participate in the UN General Assembly.

“North Korea’s nuclear deterrence is not intended to attack other countries, but as a means to safeguard the country’s territory,” and added, “If we were weak, the U.S. would have attacked us already,” the Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) reported.

According to the DPA report, Minister Choi was quoted as saying, “I can’t say” when asked about how many nuclear weapons the North had produced and whether it planned to implement any nuclear tests. Choi also added, “The one thing I can say is that we posess a ‘nuclear deterrent force’ and are strengthening it.”

As for the reprocessing of the spent fuel rods in Yongbyun, he restated its claim of North Korea’s completion of the reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods and said that North Korea had resumed all the nuclear development facilities after the U.S. had halted the 1994 Geneva Agreement last November.

“We have no plan of nuclear development using enriched uranium,” adding, “We have never made any promises with regards to the next round of six-party talks, even though there are some reports that we promised to join the talks.” He further reiterated that direct talks between North Korea and the U.S. would be the only solution to the nuclear issues.

Kwan-Hee Hong konihong@donga.com