AFP, Seoul

North Korea said yesterday its status as a nuclear weapons state was “irreversible” and key to ensuring regional stability, rejecting calls by the United States and its allies for denuclearisation.

Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted it will not abandon its nuclear arsenal, portraying it as essential to deterrence, with Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un calling the policy a “line of no retreat” earlier this month.

The North’s statement came after a trilateral meeting between South Korea, Japan and the United States in Tokyo on Friday, at which the allies reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

“The US and its vassal forces’ meaningless rhetoric against the DPRK... can never affect the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” the unnamed spokesperson said in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency on Sunday, using the acronym for the North’s official name.