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S.Korean president reiterates call for DPRK's nuclear renunciation

Xinhua, March 4, 2016 Adjust font size:

South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Friday reiterated her call for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear renunciation, saying Pyongyang should return to a path to real change.

Park said during a commission ceremony for military officers that unless the DPRK is made to stop its nuclear program, it will continue to advance its nuclear capability and bring an irreversible disaster to the future of the Korean peninsula.

The president urged Pyongyang to come to a path to real change by dropping a wrong delusion that its nuclear weapons guarantee its regime survival, saying the DPRK should be made to realize that its regime cannot survive unless the country abandons its nuclear program.

Her comments came after new tougher-than-ever sanctions resolution was adopted at the UN Security Council against the DPRK for its latest nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

Hours after the adoption, the DPRK fired off six short-range projectiles into eastern waters in an apparent show of anger over the resolution, which South Korea described as the toughest and most effective non-military measures in seven decades of UN history.

Calling the new sanctions as unprecedentedly strong measures, Park said South Korea will take all of strong and effective measures until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear program and becomes a responsible member of the international community.

Park warned that backlashes and provocations from the DPRK could become stronger than before due to the harsh sanctions, urging the commissioned officers to sternly respond to any DPRK provocations.

Tensions are expected to go up on the Korean peninsula as the United States and South Korea are scheduled to kick off their joint annual war games, which would become the largest-ever in scale, next week.

The war games, which the DPRK has denounced as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion, would run for more than a month through April, mobilizing U.S. strategic assets such as a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable combat aircrafts and a submarine.

Top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un ordered his military to get nuclear warheads deployed for national defense always on standby in order to be fired at any time, according to the DPRK's KCNA news agency.

Kim's order came as he guided the test-firing of a new multiple rocket launcher, boosting concerns over tensions forecast to be raised next week. Enditem