DPRK declares itself nuclear weapons state - Reports

• 

DPRK passed legislation that declares the country a nuclear-weapon state, giving its leader, Kim Jong-un, sole authority over nuclear decisions, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing Pyongyang's state media.

The 7th Session of the DPRK's 14th Supreme People's Assembly approved a decree titled Nuclear Weapons Policy on Wednesday, as per the Korean Central News Agency.

The law, which included 11 paragraphs, governs the use of nuclear weapons.

The new law stipulated that DPRK could use nuclear weapons under these conditions: the imminent threat of an attack on DPRK by an enemy country using nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, an attack on the leadership and command of DPRK's nuclear forces, and an attack on the country's strategically vital facilities.

The third paragraph, titled "command and control of nuclear weapons," states that Kim Jong-un has the sole authority to dispose of nuclear arsenals and "makes all nuclear weapons decisions."

In the event that DPRK's nuclear command and control system is threatened by a hostile attack, KCNA stated that a nuclear strike would be launched immediately to destroy the hostile forces and their command.

In the same context, the DPRK's leader Kim Jong Un said Friday that his country will never abandon nuclear weapons needed to counter the United States, which he accused of trying to weaken Pyongyang's defenses and eventually bring his government down.

"The aim of the US is not only to eliminate our nuclear weapons but to completely destroy our nuclear power to force us to give up the right of self-defense, to weaken us to overthrow our regime at any time," Kim Jong-un told the 7th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly, as quoted by the Yonhap news agency.

During a speech at Supreme People's Assembly, the Korean leader said that " “the purpose of the United States is not only to remove our nuclear might itself but eventually forcing us to surrender or weaken our rights to self-defense through giving up our nukes so that they could collapse our government at any time."

No sanctions, he added, will force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

"This is the [US] misjudgment and miscalculation... You can impose sanctions for a hundred days, a thousand days, ten years, a hundred years. We are not going to give up the right to survival and the right to self-defense, on which the country's security and its people depend. And no matter how difficult a situation we find ourselves in, we, who have to deter an even bigger nuclear power, the United States that has created this political and military situation on the Korean Peninsula, can never give up nuclear weapons."