North Korea's ambassador to Britain warns: 'We are ready for nuclear war with nuclear war'

(Image credit: Song Kyung-Seok-Pool/Getty Images)

published 21 March 2015

In an interview with Sky News on Friday, Hyun Hak Bong, the North Korean ambassador to Britain, said that while his country does not want war, "if the United States strike us, we should strike back."

"We do not want war, but we are not afraid of war. We are ready for nuclear war with nuclear war," Hyun said as reported by Al Jazeera English. "It is not the United States that has a monopoly on nuclear weapon strikes."

North Korea quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993; the country has recently denounced joint military exercises between U.S. and South Korean troops as a "provocation." Experts are divided, though, on how advanced any of North Korea’s nuclear weapons might actually be; the country has conducted three tests since 2006, with dubious success, and a South Korean spokesman said the neighboring country does not believe North Korea has realized its goal of miniaturizing nuclear warheads, to be placed on missiles.

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Sarah Eberspacher is an associate editor at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked as a sports reporter at The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus and The Arizona Republic. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

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