This has made invalid the September 19 Joint Statement, which was adopted at the six-party talks on the principle of respect for sovereignty and equality, signaling an end to the discussion on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

It is entirely attributable to the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK, which has been pursued before the nuclear issue in the Korean Peninsula came up.

The U.S., which divided Korea into two after the Second World War, refused even to call the DPRK by its official name, to say nothing of the establishment of diplomatic relations, while opening diplomatic ties with socialist countries in Eastern Europe different from it in ideology and social system.

The DPRK joined the UN in Juche 80 (1991) and established diplomatic relations with many countries. But the U.S. still refuses to recognize it as a sovereign state with whom it should co-exist in the international community, regarding it as a target to be removed.

Such hostile policy of the U.S. is clearly represented in maintaining the state of truce in the Korean Peninsula for more than a half century while persistently posing military threats to the DPRK.

The Korean Armistice Agreement, concluded on July 27, 1953, was a transitional measure aimed at withdrawing all foreign troops from the Korean Peninsula and ensuring permanent peace there.

However, the U.S. intentionally chose to prolong the state of armistice.

In November 1953, it defined as its ultimate goal to prevent the spread of communism into south Korea by turning it into a military ally while maintaining the armistice regime until "pro-American unification" is achieved on the peninsula.

Accordingly, the U.S. deliberately ruptured the Geneva conference for a peaceful solution to the Korean issue in June 1954. It also turned down all peace proposals made by the DPRK government, including a proposal for conclusion of a peace treaty between the DPRK and the U.S. and a proposal for replacing the armistice agreement with a peace accord.

Meanwhile it has hurled latest military hardware into south Korea, including nuclear weapons, and carried on DPRK-targeted joint military exercises for scores of years under various names in line with such war scenarios as "OPLAN 5029".

The U.S. has restricted trade with the DPRK and imposed all sorts of economic sanctions on it under the pretexts that the DPRK threatens regional stability and does not cooperate with the U.S. in its "anti-terrorism" efforts and that it is not a nation based on the market economy.

A few days ago, it cooked up a "resolution" over the DPRK's satellite launch for peaceful purposes, calling for tightened sanctions against the country aimed at stifling its social system.

It even practiced live shell firing with the DPRK flag as a target and steered the move to destroy statues of Kim Il Sung, eternal president of the DPRK.

The facts show that force, not words, is needed to cope with the U.S. hostile policy and that it was quite right for the DPRK to take the road of Songun (military-first), the road of independence.

The DPRK has already risen to be a full-fledged nuclear state and the day was gone when the U.S. threatened the former with nukes. The DPRK's access to nukes was due to the constant threats of the U.S., the world's biggest nuclear weapons state.

The self-defensive nuclear deterrent of the DPRK is instrumental to preventing a new war and ensuring peace and security on the Korean Peninsula.