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North Korea passes law allowing nuclear strike if under threat
State media in North Korea said the country has passed a law allowing it to carry out a preventive nuclear strike and declaring its status as a nuclear-armed state "irreversible.”
The announcement comes at a time of crumbling ties between the North Korea and South Korea, with the North blaming the South for the outbreak of Covid-19 in its territory, and conducting a record number of weapons tests this year.
The law will allow North Korea to carry out a preventive nuclear strike "automatically" and "immediately to destroy hostile forces," when a foreign country poses an imminent threat to Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
KCA reported that leader Kim Jong-un said that with the newly enacted law, "the status of our country as a nuclear weapons state has become irreversible".
In July, he said country was "ready to mobilise" its nuclear capability in any war with the US and South Korea.
He reiterated that Pyongyang would never give up the nuclear weapons it needed to counter hostilities from Washington.
"There is absolutely no such thing as giving up nuclear weapons first, and there is no de-nuclearisation and no negotiation," he said during a speech at North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, according to KCNA.
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A blitz of North Korean weapons tests since January included the firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017.
Officials in Washington and South Korea have repeatedly warned that North Korea is preparing to carry out what would be its seventh nuclear test.
Nuclear talks and diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang have been derailed since 2019 over sanctions relief, and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.
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South Korea last month offered North Korea an "audacious" aid plan that would include food, energy and infrastructure help in return for the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.
But North Korea ridiculed the offer, calling it the "height of absurdity" and a deal it would never accept.
South Korea's president Yoon Suk-yeol said last month his administration had no plans to pursue its own nuclear deterrent.
Source: rte
