North Korea Will Scrap Nukes After Normalization With US

North Korea will scrap its nuclear weapons only after it sees the “elimination” of the U.S. threat of a nuclear attack by normalizing their bilateral relationship, a senior North Korean official told a U.S. think tank forum last November, Kyodo News reported Saturday.

This North Korean official firmly told the U.S. that even if the nuclear verification document is ready and the negotiation enters a final stage of denuclearization, the North won’t first give up nuclear weapons, Kyodo said.

“If the North Korea-U.S. relationship becomes normalized and if North Korea doesn’t feel the nuclear threat from the U.S., we don’t have any reason to have a single nuclear weapon,” the North Korean official said.

His statement was seen as North Korea’s desire to have a security guarantee by signing the normalization first.

The think tank forum held in November in New York was hosted by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), a leading non-profit foreign diplomacy brainstorming organ, which proposed the dispatch of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Defense Secretary William Perry to Pyongyang within a few months after a new U.S. president assumes office to move the stalled negotiation to a fast-track conclusion.