North Korea has formally rejected the resolution on its nuclear programme adopted this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said its standing as a nuclear power is irreversible. The statement was released on Saturday by the state news agency KCNA and signed by Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un and a deputy department director of the Workers' Party Central Committee.
"The IAEA forcibly adopted an anti-DPRK 'resolution' that takes issue with our country's self-defensive and legitimate nuclear activities," Kim Yo Jong wrote, according to the text carried by KCNA. The decision, she said, is "yet another representative case that lays bare the agency's extreme double standards and bias."
103 in favour, 6 against, 14 abstentions
The resolution was adopted on Thursday at the IAEA's 70th General Conference in Vienna by 103 votes in favour, 6 against and 14 abstentions. It went to a formal vote rather than the consensus that usually closes the agency's debates. Russia and China were among the votes against.
Titled "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement between the Agency and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," the text reaffirms that North Korea cannot hold nuclear-weapon-state status under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and calls on Pyongyang to cease all related activities immediately. It records concern over the operation of the Yongbyon reactor and over expanded uranium enrichment capacity at more than one facility.
The "double standards" argument
Kim Yo Jong argued that the agency ignores what she described as proliferation by the West itself: US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, extended deterrence commitments to South Korea and Japan, and the planned transfer of nuclear submarine technology to Seoul.
"We will never mortgage our sovereignty and right to security to the 'tolerance' of the US and the West under any circumstances," she said.
The symmetry the argument proposes is open to question — the arrangements she cites involve countries that remain inside the NPT, while North Korea left the treaty before testing its first bomb. Even so, this is the axis on which Pyongyang has built its public answer to every agency resolution, and Saturday's statement repeats the formula almost unchanged.
Munitions plants and a door left ajar
The statement comes as Kim Jong Un wrapped up a three-day inspection of munitions factories and addressed party propaganda officials, demanding new methods in what he called contemporary ideological warfare.
Pulling the other way, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said US President Donald Trump is seeking dialogue with Pyongyang and that Seoul intends to facilitate any talks. Nothing in Kim Yo Jong's statement closes that door: what she rules out is denuclearisation as a starting point, not negotiation itself.
With information from the Korea Times, Al Jazeera and SBS.
