PYONGYANG, North Korea, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- North Korean officials Monday pledged to retain their nuclear arsenal until the United States removed "nuclear threats" against it.
So far, South Korea and the United States have reacted calmly to the North's recent and pointed statement made to justify its nuclear aspirations, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
"The (South Korean President) Lee Myung-bak group of traitors should clearly understand that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is by no means an issue of 'dismantling the north's nuclear weapons,'" a General Staff of the Korean People's Army spokesman said in an interview published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea won't dismantle its nuclear weapons unless similar weapons in South Korea "are dismantled to remove the nuclear threat from the United States," the spokesman was reported as saying.
South Korean officials said the country has no nuclear weapons.
Officials in Pyongyang claim the country was forced to develop nuclear weapons because of "nuclear threats" from the U.S. military stationed in South Korea. The U.S. military withdrew its nuclear arsenal from the South in the early 1990s, following an inter-Korean denuclearization pact in 1992.
However, the United States said it would provide a nuclear umbrella for South Korea if it were attacked by the North.
Cha Do-hyeogn, a North Korea specialist with the state-run think tank Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, said Pyongyang is sending a message to U.S. President Barack Obama.
"With this, North Korea is displaying its consistent position that it wants to reduce South Korea's standing and directly talk with the U.S.," he said.
