North Korea has a message for longtime benefactor China: Pyongyang’s nukes aren’t going anywhere.
Just a day before Chinese leader Xi Jinping was due to arrive in North Korea — his first visit since 2019 — Kim Jong Un’s regime made it increasingly clear that Pyongyang’s “denuclearization,” long a stated goal of both the United States and China, is off the table.
“The DPRK’s status as a nuclear weapons state is the line of no retreat and it is a stark reality whether anyone recognizes it or not. Reality never changes by outsiders’ hope or rhetoric,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of the North’s leader, as saying Sunday.
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