Nuclear weapons guarantee N. Korea’s safety, Kim Jong-un says

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said that Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons guarantee its safety, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday. Kim was addressing a conference of veterans on the 67th anniversary of the 1953 armistice that ended Korean War hostilities.

Up to three million Koreans died in the three-year conflict. The armistice has never been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving North and South technically still at war.

“Thanks to our reliable and effective self-defensive nuclear deterrent, there will no longer be such word as war on this land,” AFP quoted Kim as saying, citing the report. “Our national security and future will be firmly guaranteed forever,” he added.

Inter-Korean relations have been in deep freeze for months, following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam between Kim and US President Donald Trump last year.