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North Korea: Pyongyang Publicly Admits Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons In a state-run news agency commentary, North Korea has for the first time publicly admitted that it is seeking nuclear weapons, Reuters reported today (see GSN, June 6). “We are not trying to possess a nuclear deterrent in order to blackmail others, but we are trying to reduce conventional weapons and divert our human and monetary resources to economic development and improve the living standards of the people,” said a statement from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (Martin Nesirky, Reuters, June 9). The statement is the first public acknowledgment of what is commonly accepted by many, said Yu Suk-ryul of the South Korean Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, which is connected to the Foreign Ministry. “Reading between the lines, it looks as though they see that Washington has not been as scared as they had hoped by their threats of the past eight months,” Yu said. Former South Korean Ambassador Park Soo-gil said the announcement is a “joke.” He doubted that North Korea sought nuclear weapons to lower conventional forces, instead calling the move an attention-grabbing stunt. “North Korea began to strip its clothes off a while ago and nobody is paying as much attention to the strip show anymore,” Park said (Charles Whelan, Agence France-Presse, June 9). Security Causes North Korea to Suspend Ferry Pyongyang today cut off ferry service to Japan after Tokyo began increasing inspections of North Korean boats and freighters, the New York Times reported. The ferry arrived in the Japanese port of Niigata Monday and was met by 1,900 Japanese law enforcement officials. The Japanese group included police officers and officials from the Transport, Health, Justice and Finance ministries. This summer, the extensive inspections will be applied to North Korean cargo ships, according to the New York Times. “We are going to keep a really severe eye on the North Korean ships,” said Taro Kono, a governing party member of Japan’s Parliament. “We are not going to allow narcotics to come into Japan. We are not going to allow missile parts to go back to North Korea,” he added (James Brooke, New York Times, June 9).
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