SEOUL
\nNorth Korea has passed a law allowing it to carry out a preventive nuclear strike and declaring its status as a nuclear-armed state \u201cirreversible\u201d, Pyongyang\u2019s official media said Friday.
\nThe announcement comes at a time of crumbling ties between the North and South, with Pyongyang blaming Seoul for the outbreak of Covid-19 in its territory and conducting a record number of weapons tests this year.
\nThe law will allow North Korea to carry out a preventive nuclear strike \u201cautomatically\u201d and \u201cimmediately to destroy the hostile forces\u201d when a foreign country poses an imminent threat to Pyongyang, the official Korean Centrak News Agency (KCNA) said.
\nWith the newly enacted law, \u201cthe status of our country as a nuclear weapons state has become irreversible\u201d, leader Kim Jong Un said, according to KCNA.
\nKim in July said his country was \u201cready to mobilise\u201d its nuclear capability in any war with the United States and the South. He reiterated that Pyongyang would never give up the nuclear weapons it needed to counter hostilities from Washington, claiming the United States sought to \u201ccollapse\u201d his regime at any time.
\nNuclear 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.
\n\u201cThere is absolutely no such thing as giving up nuclear weapons first, and there is no denuclearisation and no negotiation,\u201d leader Kim said during a speech at North Korea\u2019s rubber-stamp parliament on Thursday, KCNA reported.
\nThe new law shows Kim\u2019s confidence in his country\u2019s nuclear and military competence, including its intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US, said Cheong Seong-chang of the Centre for North Korea Studies at the Sejong Institute.
\nThe law \u201cpublicly justifies Pyongyang\u2019s use of its nuclear power\u201d in the event of any military clash, including in response to non-nuclear attacks, Cheong said.
\nA 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL North Korea has passed a law allowing it to carry out a preventive nuclear strike and declaring its status as a nuclear-armed state \u201cirreversible\u201d, Pyongyang\u2019s official media said Friday. The announcement comes at a time of crumbling ties between the North and South, with Pyongyang blaming Seoul for the outbreak of Covid-19 in its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-282689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n