According to Ria-Novosti of Russia on Jan. 10, the ambassador in an interview with a news agency said that the nuclear issue cannot be settled only by accusations and sanctions against the DPRK. The issue can be settled through dialogue and diplomacy, he noted, adding it is almost impossible to expect a change under the present situation in which the Armistice Agreement signed in 1953 has not been replaced by a peace treaty.

The DPRK is set to show that the U.S. will have to pay an increasing amount of price for refusing dialogue with the DPRK, he said, noting how the DPRK will act in the future depends on the U.S. attitude.

Conveying this, the news agency said that the DPRK is calling for putting an end to the present situation in the Korean Peninsula which is neither war nor peace from long ago. But the U.S., which is deploying lots of troops in south Korea under the pretext of the "threat from the north", is refusing to discuss the issue of concluding a peace treaty with the DPRK, it said, adding herein lies the one of the reasons that the DPRK is bolstering nuclear deterrence.