It is quite natural that voices demanding this are heard from the 8th NPT review conference which has been underway at the UN since May 3.

In 1978, the U.S., the former Soviet Union and Britain, depositories of the NPT, issued a "statement" giving assurances of non-use of nukes against the non-nuclear states which acceded to the NPT, albeit conditional.

It is regrettable, however, that this principle of the treaty has not been honored on the international arena.

The U.S., in utter disregard of its commitment under the NPT, adopted a preemptive nuclear attack as its state policy. It has openly claimed that the NPT "does not ban the modernization of nuclear combat forces" while taking the lead in replacing aging nukes with new ones, improving their performance and developing new type nuclear weapons.

It was none other than the U.S. that compelled the DPRK to pull out of the NPT.

The U.S has increased its nuclear threat to the DPRK despite the consistent efforts made by the DPRK to turn the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear-free zone.

The DPRK rendered active assistance to the IAEA in its six ad hoc inspections from May 1992 to February 1993 as per the relevant article of the NPT. The U.S., however, prodded dishonest forces within the agency into cooking up a "resolution on special inspection" targeted against not only nuclear facilities but sensitive military objects in the DPRK while ballyhooing about "suspected nuclear development" even before the ad hoc inspection was over. It even resumed the temporarily suspended Team Spirit joint military exercises, increasing its nuclear threat to the DPRK.

This provided a typical example proving that the NPT was abused as a means for justifying the U.S. arbitrary practices, far from checking them.

It was against this backdrop that the DPRK declared its pullout of the NPT on March 12, 1993 and notified the depositories of it in order to defend the sovereignty and security of the country. As the U.S. responded to the DPRK-U.S. dialogue in the subsequent period, the DPRK took a measure of declaring a moratorium on its withdrawal from the NPT while the dialogue was underway.

No sooner had the Bush administration taken office than unilaterally scrapped the "DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework" for settling the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula signed during the Clinton administration, listed the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil" and released a "nuclear posture review" in which the DPRK was designated as "a target of preemptive nuclear attack".

This compelled the DPRK to take such a resolute self-defensive measure as lifting the decade-long moratorium on its withdrawal from the NPT on January 10, 2003 and completely pulling out of the treaty in order to defend the country from the U.S. serious nuclear threat.

The DPRK's withdrawal from the NPT and its accession to nukes were a legitimate and just exercise of its right to cope with the U.S. and its followers' violation of its sovereignty.

The DPRK is technically at war with the U.S. Therefore, it could not but react to the U.S. nuclear threat with nukes as the latter threatened the former with nuclear weapons after unilaterally reneging on its "assurances of non-use of nukes".

The Obama administration in its recent "nuclear posture review" excluded the DPRK, Iran and a few other countries from the "list of those countries against which nukes would not be used". This proves that its policy is little different from the hostile policy toward the DPRK pursued by the Bush administration which had posed constant nuclear threat to the DPRK after designating it as "a target of preemptive nuclear attack".

The DPRK is, therefore, left with no justification to weaken its nuclear deterrent, a means for self-defence, under the situation where the U.S. nuclear blackmail persists.

The U.S. loudly trumpets about "nuclear non-proliferation" but it is the very country which encourages the spread of nukes in actuality.

The world is bound to head for a nuclear arms race whether it likes or not unless the U.S. nuclear threat and blackmail are brought to an end.

The 8th NPT review conference is now underway at a time when many countries of the world are regarding the peaceful use of nuclear energy as an essential strategic option for achieving their sustainable development. It should, therefore, provide an opportunity of yielding positive results in such fields as disarmament, the fulfillment of commitments to nuclear non-proliferation, building nuclear-free zones and peaceful use of nuclear energy on the principles of equality and impartiality.