North Korea’s U.N. envoy said Thursday that Pyongyang is not bound by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In this photo, North Korea shows off an ICBM at a military parade in Pyongyang in October. File Photo by KCNA/EPA
North Korea is not bound by the global treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, its U.N. envoy said Thursday, calling efforts to force Pyongyang to comply with the pact a “wanton violation” of international law.
Kim Song, North Korea’s permanent representative to the United Nations, made the remarks in a statement carried by the state-run Korea Central News Agency during an ongoing review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The United States and other countries at the conference are “groundlessly taking issue with the present status and exercise of sovereign rights of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a nuclear weapons state outside the treaty,” Kim wrote, using North Korea’s official name.
“The position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state does not change in accordance with rhetorical assertion or unilateral desire of outsiders,” he said. “Clarifying once again, the DPRK is not bound by the NPT in any case.”
North Korea formally withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and in 2022 passed a law declaring itself a nuclear state. Leader Kim Jong Un later called the country’s nuclear status “irreversible,” and Pyongyang amended its constitution to codify the expansion of its nuclear forces.
Pyongyang has repeated the assertion frequently, including during a rare address to the U.N. General Assembly in September, when a senior diplomat vowed the North would “never give up” its nuclear weapons.
In a 2025 report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea possesses about 50 nuclear warheads and has enough fissile material for about 40 more. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said in January that North Korea was producing enough weapons-grade material to build between 10 and 20 nuclear weapons annually.
The envoy’s statement comes ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to China next week, where speculation has persisted that the trip could provide an opportunity to revive leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim Jong Un.
Trump held a pair of high-profile summits with Kim during his first term in office and has suggested on several occasions that he would meet with the North Korean leader again.
Kim appeared to leave the door open to renewed diplomacy with Washington in remarks last year, saying he retained “fond memories” of Trump but warning that denuclearization was off the table.
On Monday, a White House official told Yonhap News Agency that a Trump-Kim meeting was “not currently on the schedule.”
