“The Korean Peninsula has now been turned into the world's most dangerous hot spot which can even ignite the outbreak of a nuclear war,” Minister Ri Yong Ho said in his address, adding: “The situation [there] is often engulfed in a state that goes out of control, whose root cause squarely lies in the United States, which does not abandon its hostile policy towards the DPRK.”

Referring to recent US military exercises, including “a pre-emptive nuclear strike” aimed at the “decapitation” of the DPRK leadership and “occupation of Pyongyang,” the Minister said that there have never been such undisguised military threats and dangerous acts conducted “under the nose” of the adversary.

Recalling that the Korean Peninsula does not have a proper institutional peace mechanism and that the war there remains in a state of temporary armistice, he said “it is the place where provocative military acts […] can easily infuriate the other side, thus inviting its response” and even incidental accidents could escalate into an all-out war.

He further said that the DPRK has made every possible effort to prevent an armed conflict, while taking necessary self-defensive countermeasures whenever the provocative and aggressive joint military exercises were conducted by the US and the Republic of Korea and spoke of the DPRK's request to hold an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the exercises but was turned away every time.

“On the other hand, the UN Security Council takes issue with the righteous self-defensive measures taken by the DPRK to safeguard its sovereignty, dignity and national security,” he stressed and noted that his country “had no other choice but to 'go nuclear' inevitably after it has done everything possible to defend the national security from the constant nuclear threats.”

He further emphasized that countries that had their begun nuclear activities far ahead of the DPRK were never called into question “because the UN Security Council is the place where [guilt is] decided not on the basis of justice but by the criterion whether one has the veto power or not.”

The Minister also recalled the recent Summit of Heads of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) where leaders “expressed their condemnation at the promulgation and application of unilateral coercive measures against countries of the Movement, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, particularly the principles of non-intervention, self-determination and independence of the States.”

He further underscored that the DPRK will continue to take measures to strengthen its national nuclear armed forces to defend its dignity, right to existence and safeguard genuine peace against threat of nuclear war from the US.

Concluding his address, the Minister said: “The Government of the DPRK will push ahead with the vigorous struggle to remove the root cause of the threat of nuclear war imposed by the US, by means of powerful nuclear deterrence, safeguard the peace and security of the Korean peninsula, Asia and the world at large and to denuclearize the world.”