North Korea Amends Constitution to Enshrine Nuclear Weapons Buildup

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, (bottom C), attends a meeting of the country's parliament in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo provided by the North Korean government and taken during a two-day session on Sept. 26–27, 2023. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

North Korea’s legislature, the Supreme People’s Assembly, has amended the country’s constitution to enshrine the expansion of its nuclear forces as a national mission.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced that the Supreme People’s Assembly had unanimously approved the constitutional amendment on Sept. 28.

“It is of very deep and weighty significance that we have adopted the decision with unanimous approval to supplement Article 58 of Chapter 4 of the Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with new contents — to ensure the country’s right to existence and development, deter war and protect regional and global peace by rapidly developing nuclear weapons to a higher level,” the North Korean leader said, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the formal name for the North Korean regime.

The amendment to the North Korean constitution makes nuclear force-building a permanent component of the country’s law. Mr. Kim said this move will strengthen his country’s defense capabilities and help accelerate “the overall development” of its “style [of] socialism.”

Justifying the nuclear buildup, Mr. Kim described a “new Cold War” brought on by a “triangular military alliance” between the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, also known as South Korea.

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Mr. Kim said this “triangular military alliance” is akin to an Asia-Pacific version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance between the United States and various Western European nations that formed near the start of the Cold War to counter the communist Soviet Union and its allies.

The North Korean leader credited his country’s nuclear buildup with deterring attacks and countering “nuclear blackmail” by the United States.

“Had our Republic merely pinned its hopes on the nuclear umbrella of others, exposed to the ever-increasing nuclear blackmail and threats from the U.S., and failed to boldly decide on the line of arming itself with nuclear weapons, captivated by gestures of ‘goodwill’ hyped up by the imperialists and spurious temptations, and stopped or retreated from the already started arduous journey, it would have certainly suffered a nuclear holocaust and total destruction long ago,” Mr. Kim said.

Kim Bristles at US–South Korea–Japan Partnership

The United States has been working to bolster its military and diplomatic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, primarily to check China’s presence in the region, but also to deter North Korea.

U.S. efforts within the Indo-Pacific region have included joint military drills with a variety of regional partners, including Japan and South Korea. While these drills may serve to improve geopolitical partnerships and military interoperability between the United States, South Korea, and Japan, the North Korean regime often cites these efforts as cause for concern.

North Korea has routinely cast the joint U.S.–South Korean military drills as provocations and demanded that they cease, and it has even engaged in its own shows of military force during joint U.S.–South Korean drills. North Korean forces fired numerous cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea earlier this month after U.S. and South Korean forces concluded an 11-day set of joint drills.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, said the North Korean constitutional amendment confirms Mr. Kim’s unwillingness to relinquish his nuclear weapons program. The ministry said South Korea will continue to expand its military cooperation with the United States and Japan and work closer with other international partners to increase pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

While the United States has been expanding its partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, North Korea has recently begun partnering more closely with Russia.

Last year, U.S. officials raised allegations that North Korea had begun supplying Russian mercenary forces with weapons, potentially bolstering Russian capabilities against U.S.-backed Ukrainian forces.

High-level Russian and Chinese delegations traveled to North Korea in July to discuss other ways to strengthen their military cooperation. Mr. Kim also traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month for further discussions about military cooperation, eliciting concerned remarks from U.S. State Department officials.

U.S. State Department officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by NTD News for comment about the new North Korean constitutional amendment.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

From NTD News