North Korea's foreign minister on Friday dismissed recent calls for nuclear disarmament by the Group of Seven, claiming that the secretive regime's status as a nuclear power is "final and irreversible."
In a joint communique issued earlier this week, top diplomats from the G7 member states condemned North Korea's "unprecedented number of unlawful ballistic missile launches" and urged the North to comply with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui called the communique "the most absurd and illegal interference in the internal affairs of the DPRK," in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
Choe said that the North was "compelled to have access to nukes literally to defend itself from the U.S. threat."
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