North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017.
KCNA / REUTERS
TOKYO — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says the United States should be aware that his country’s nuclear forces are now a reality, not a threat. Kim was speaking in his annual New Year’s Day address.
Kim said the country had achieved the historic feat of “completing” its nuclear forces and added that the has a “nuclear button” on his desk.
The customary New Year’s address was broadcast Monday morning on North Korean state television.
Last week, North Korean officials said it is a “pipe dream” for the United States to think it will give up its nuclear weapons, and called tough new U.N. sanctions targeting the country “an act of war” that violates its sovereignty.
“We define this ‘sanctions resolution’ rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the region and categorically reject the ‘resolution,'” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday.
The ministry said the sanctions are tantamount to a “complete economic blockade” of North Korea.
North Korea has carried out a number of nuclear tests this year, including a test on Nov. 29 of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile yet.
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