Kim Jong-un takes fundamental decision to rid country of nuke

World July 24, 2018, 19:31

Elimination of the nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri is a very big step on the part of the DPRK, the diplomat notes

MOSCOW, July 24. /TASS/. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has taken a fundamental decision to denuclearize his country and he is observing it, Alexander Matsegora, the Russian Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea told TASS on Tuesday.

Elimination of the nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri is a very weighty step on the part of the DPRK, he said adding, "We begin to treat very seriously what the leader of the DPRK is saying."

"I think this isn’t a propagandistic declaration but much rather an earnest statement by a country leader who means what he says," Matsegora said. "We think these measures testify to the fundamental character of his decision. He has taken it and he is acting on it."

"Quite naturally, the Americans are trying to check it and to make sure the testing facility was closed down in a manner that wouldn’t make its restoration possible," he said. "One has to bear in mind in this connection, however, the North Koreans had perfect knowledge of the testing site and of its technological capabilities and they drafted a plan for its decommissioning on the basis of this knowledge."

"And the Americans would have had to spend several months examining the site if they wanted to be sure everything was done the way they fancied it. They would have had to inspect it in details and to walk through all those underground corridors and galleries not once or twice, to gather a multitude of basic data, to draft a project of their own proceeding from them, and to spend a lot of money for the dismantling works as such."

"My opinion is that is the North Koreans have come up with this initiative and have drafted a project on their own and have demolished the site in the presence of foreign reporters, this means they have taken the issue very seriously," Matsegora said.

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