Some unsavory forces are busy floating inside and outside the conference hall the assertion that the DPRK should not be recognized as a nuclear weapons state and it should dismantle nuclear weapons and return to the NPT, etc. while finding fault with its withdrawal from the treaty.

There is a paragraph in the NPT stipulating that a country may withdraw from the treaty in the event its supreme state interests are put at peril.

The DPRK began to go through the procedures for the withdrawal from the NPT according to its Paragraph 10 in 1993 to cope with the emergency situation in which the U.S. became evermore undisguised in posing a nuclear threat to the DPRK while gravely violating its sovereignty by abusing the NPT. According to the treaty, the withdrawal from the NPT shall take effect three months after the notification on it, but the DPRK went through all the formalities for the withdrawal stipulated in the treaty, thus finally putting into force its withdrawal in 2003. This proves that the DPRK handled the withdrawal from the NPT in a serious manner, exercising utmost patience even when its supreme state interests were in jeopardy.

In the subsequent period, too, the DPRK manufactured nuclear weapons legitimately by opening to the public all facts in a transparent manner in order to protect the sovereignty of the country and the security of the nation from the increasing U.S. nuclear threat. By all accounts, it was the U.S. that compelled the DPRK to pull out of the NPT and have access to nukes.

There were some views taking issue with the DPRK's access to nukes at the on-going review conference but the DPRK does not care about it as it is outside the NPT. The DPRK is not bound to any duty not to have access to nukes but has legitimate right to steadily bolster up its nuclear deterrent as much as it deems necessary for protecting its supreme state interests.

The DPRK does not want any body to recognize it as a nuclear weapons state nor feels any need to be done so. It is just satisfied with the pride and self-esteem that it is capable of reliably defending the sovereignty of the country and the security of the nation with its own nuclear weapons.

The DPRK had never violated the NPT even before its withdrawal from it. There have been breaches of only Paragraph 6 stipulating the nuclear weapons states' commitment to nuclear disarmament so far. Four decades have passed since the NPT took effect but the destructive power of nuclear weapons existing on the earth has further increased, far from being dismantled in this period.

This treaty should not have been extended for an indefinite period from the outset as it recognizes the existence of nuclear weapons states. It should have been replaced by a worldwide treaty for eliminating nuclear weapons. In order to build a world without nuclear weapons, it is necessary to step up nuclear disarmament so as to deprive the treaty of any justification to exist, far from allowing the NPT to remain in force for an indefinite period.