A spokesman for the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tuesday issued a statement turning down this assertion intended to mislead the public opinion.

The statement recalled that at the six party talks held on September 19, 2005, the six parties agreed to denuclearize not only the northern half of the Korean Peninsula but the whole of it and, to this end, the United States committed itself to terminate its hostile relations with the DPRK, assure it of non-use of nuclear weapons and clear south Korea of nukes, etc.

It continued:

We consented to the September 19 Joint Statement, not prompted by the desire to improve the relations through denuclearization, but proceeding from the principled stand to realize the denuclearization through the normalization of the relations. Our aim to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula is, above all, to remove the U.S. nuclear threat to the DPRK that has lasted for the past half century.

The nuclear issue surfaced on the Korean Peninsula because of the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its nuclear threat resulting from it, and the hostile relations are not attributable to the nuclear issue.

It is a twisted logic to assert that the bilateral relations can be improved only when we show nukes before anything else, and this is a distortion of the spirit of the September 19 Joint Statement.

As clarified in the joint statement, the denuclearization of the whole Korean Peninsula should be strictly realized in a verifiable manner.

Free field access should be ensured to verify the introduction and deployment of U.S. nukes in south Korea and details about their withdrawal and there should be verification procedures to inspect on a regular basis the possible reintroduction or passage of nukes.

As proven in practice, the basic way of implementing the September 19 Joint Statement under the situation where there is no mutual confidence is to observe the principle of "action for action".

This principle can never be an exception as far as the issue of verification is concerned.

It is necessary to simultaneously verify the whole Korean Peninsula at the phase where the denuclearization is ultimately realized according to the said principle.

When the U.S. nuclear threat is removed and south Korea is cleared of its nuclear umbrella, we will also feel no need to keep its nuclear weapons.

This precisely means the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and it is our invariable stand.

We will never do such a thing as showing our nuclear weapons first even in 100 years unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are fundamentally terminated.

If the nuclear issue is to be settled, leaving the hostile relations as they are, all nuclear weapons states should meet and realize the simultaneous nuclear disarmament. This is the only option.