North Korea says bolstering self-defensive capabilities to deter rivals

by IANS |

Seoul, Feb 15 (IANS) Bolstering self-defensive capabilities is an essential requirement for deterring rivals' provocative attempts and ensuring national security, Pyongyang said Saturday.

The strategic armed forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are to ensure the security of the state and the strategic balance of the region, as a US nuclear-powered submarine's recent access to the Korean Peninsula, and the US and South Korean militaries' plan to enforce a large-scale war drill become good reasons "for the DPRK's bolstering of its corresponding defence capabilities," said the Chief of the Policy Office of the country's defence ministry.

It is the just self-defensive right of a sovereign state to steadily develop the self-defence capability capable of effectively containing all the security threats and ensuring the national security and the strategic balance of the region, said the chief in a statement, cited by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The United States is bringing a serious threat to the security environment of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world by seeking reckless arms buildup and radical modernization of nuclear force, said the chief.

Recently, the United States claimed that the DPRK has secured the capability to strike the whole of North America with nuclear weapons, and that the DPRK's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) forces are posing a threat to the US mainland and its missile defence system, said the chief, calling the US assertions "a brigandish sophism like a guilty party filing the suit first."

The DPRK expresses serious concern over "the US military's confrontational behavior to build up public opinion about the non-existent 'threat' from the DPRK and justify the adventurous military ambition to gain the superiority of strength in the region under its pretext," the chief was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

If the United States has real concern about the security of its mainland, the only way to remove it is to thoroughly abandon its military threat and hostile policy toward independent and sovereign states, said the chief.