(Adnkronos) – A few hours after his inauguration, United States President Donald Trump called North Korea a “nuclear power”. However, although no one in the international community doubts that Pyongyang possesses a nuclear arsenal, Kim Jong-un’s regime is not officially recognized internationally as one of the nuclear powers under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Therefore, Trump’s definition elicited an immediate response from the South Korean ally, committed to denuclearizing the North.
Trump, who had met with Kim three times in his first term, has not yet gone into detail about his strategy for the region. The Republican leader took it for granted, in statements to the press, that Kim “will be happy” to see him again at the White House and stated that North Korea is “a nuclear power”, a term also used last week by his nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry clarified that “North Korea can never be recognized as a state possessing nuclear weapons”, a label that, according to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, currently only applies to the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China, reports the Yonhap news agency. Seoul, however, stressed that Trump’s remarks are “in line” with previous statements and reiterated that both the United States and South Korea will remain firmly committed in the coming years to denuclearizing the region, for which the United Nations also maintains sanctions against Kim’s regime.
