North Korea: US must eliminate ‘nuclear threat’

North Korea said Thursday that it won’t surrender its nuclear weapons unless the U.S. eliminates what North Korea called “nuclear threats” to the country.

“It is a self-evident truth that the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is a joint work which can never come true unless the DPRK and the U.S. make joint efforts,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said, according to Reuters.

{mosads}“It would be proper to say that the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula means ‘completely removing the nuclear threats of the U.S. to the DPRK’, before it means the elimination of its nuclear deterrence,” the news agency added.

North Korea also said via KCNA on Thursday that clarification is needed over what the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula would entail.

“When we refer to the Korean peninsula, they include both the area of the DPRK and the area of south Korea where aggression troops including the nuclear weapons of the U.S. are deployed,” the news agency said, according to Reuters.

“When we refer to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, it, therefore, means removing all elements of nuclear threats from the areas of both the north and the south of Korea and also from surrounding areas from where the Korean peninsula is targeted,” it continued.

Following a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, President Trump declared that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat.

North Korea made a vague agreement at that time to eventually denuclearize, but media reports since then have indicated that the country has been moving ahead with plans to develop further nuclear weapons. 

A second Trump-Kim meeting is expected early next year.