Pyongyang, October 4 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence of the DPRK issued the following statement on October 4:

The U.S. Defense Department recently made public "2023 strategy for countering WMD", in which it termed China and Russia "pacing challenge" and "acute threat" and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "persistent threat".

Such act of the U.S. military is another grave military and political provocation against independent sovereign states.

As for the "persistent threat", it is an expression most suitable for the U.S., the world's biggest WMD-armed state and the only criminal state that used A-bombs, which has labeled the DPRK as "enemy" and escalated unprecedented nuclear threat and blackmail against it since the last century.

This year alone, the U.S. staged the largest-ever joint drills, making a series of bluffing and foolish remarks such as "end" and "total destruction" of the DPRK. The U.S. also activated the conspiratorial mechanism for a nuclear attack on the DPRK according to its war scenario that made the use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK its policy.

The reckless moves of the U.S., which brought even a strategic nuclear submarine, equipped with nuclear warheads large enough to totally destroy one state, to the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, constitute the most serious WMD threat to destroy the whole world.

The world's biggest WMD threat just comes from the U.S.

Through the publication of the recent "2023 strategy for countering WMD", the U.S. has just revealed its dangerous intention for aggression to seriously violate the sovereignty and security of the DPRK and other independent sovereign states by threatening them with WMDs, and realize its wild ambition for seizing global military hegemony.

Such situation requires the DPRK's armed forces to strongly counter with powerful deterrence the ever-more reckless medium- and long-term threat posed by the U.S. seeking to use WMDs against the DPRK.

The historic 9th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly newly stipulated in the Constitution of the DPRK the mission of the armed forces of the DPRK to defend state sovereignty, territorial integrity and rights and interests of the people, safeguard the socialist system and the gains of the revolution from all sorts of threats and guarantee peace and prosperity of the country with powerful military muscle.

The armed forces of the DPRK will remain faithful to its honorable militant mission newly specified in the supreme law of the DPRK in accordance with the unanimous will of all the Korean people, and will counter the U.S. imperialist aggressors' military strategy and provocations with the most overwhelming and sustained response strategy. -0-