No-nukes treaty torn up

last updated 8 January 2015

Pyongyang

Citing “a sinister and hostile U.S.,” North Korea has thrown out a 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the peninsula free of nuclear weapons. The accord was the last remaining legal instrument barring North Korea from developing nuclear arms. Earlier this year, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and announced it had begun reprocessing nuclear fuel for use in bombs. South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, in the U.S. for a summit with President Bush, condemned the move, saying, “North Korea has two alternatives: It can go down a blind alley, or it can open up.”