North Korea has adopted a constitutional amendment to enshrine its policy on nuclear force, state media reported on Thursday, as the country’s leader pledged to accelerate production of nuclear weapons to deter what he called U.S. provocations.
The North’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, unanimously adopted at a two-day meeting which ended on Wednesday the revision of the constitution to stipulate that North Korea “develops highly nuclear weapons to ensure” its “rights to existence” and to “deter war,” news agency KCNA said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for “exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means and deploying them in different services,” saying the U.S. has gone to extremes in its military provocations with drills and the deployment of strategic assets in the region.
The amendment comes a year after North Korea officially enshrined in law the right to use preemptive nuclear strikes to protect itself, a move Kim had said would make its nuclear status “irreversible.”
