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Seoul/ AFP
North Korea on Thursday warned the incoming Donald Trump administration will have to acknowledge it as a nuclear state, as the South said the maverick
billionaire had pledged to
protect it.
The United States maintains it cannot accept North Korea as a nuclear power, despite it conducting five nuclear tests and has pushed harsh international sanctions against the Pyongyang regime. “If there is anything the Obama administration has done… it has put the security of the US mainland in the greatest danger,” said an editorial carried by North Korea’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun.
“It has burdened the new administration with the difficulty of facing the Juche nuclear state,” it said, referring to the North Korean ideology usually translated as “self-reliance”. The editorial, which did not mention Trump by name, follows growing calls for the United States to change tack on North Korea, with US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month labelling attempts to denuclearise the North a lost cause.
President Barack Obama has made talks with the North conditional on Pyongyang first making some tangible commitment towards denuclearisation, but Thursday’s editorial called the goal an “outdated illusion”.