SEOUL (Dispatches) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday it would not be easy for North Korea to destroy its nuclear arsenal quickly, even if wanted to, given its weapons programs were so developed.
North Korea is under heavy pressure to end its weapons programs but it has vowed never to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Speaking to reporters in the Philippines, Moon said that if North Korea agreed to hold talks, negotiations could be held with all options open.
"If talks begin to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue, I feel it will be realistically difficult for North Korea to completely destroy its nuclear capabilities when their nuclear and missile arsenal are at a developed stage," Moon said in a briefing.
"If so, North Korea's nuclear program should be suspended, and negotiations could go on to pursue complete denuclearization."
Last week, the North said it did not oppose dialogue, but would "never put the issue related to the supreme interests of the DPRK and security of its people on the bargaining table."
"We are not interested in such dialogue and negotiations in the least," the North's official news agency said, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North defends the programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened in his maiden UN address to "totally destroy" North Korea and has said the time for talking, the policy of previous U.S. administrations, is over.
North Korea warned Monday that the unprecedented deployment of three U.S. aircraft carrier groups "taking up a strike posture” around the Korean peninsula is making it impossible to predict when nuclear war will erupt.
North Korea’s UN Ambassador Ja Song Nam said in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres that the joint military exercises with South Korea are creating "the worst ever situation prevailing in and around the Korean peninsula.”
Along with the three carrier groups, he said the U.S. has reactivated round-the-clock sorties with nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers "which existed during the Cold War times.”
He also said the U.S. is maintaining "a surprise strike posture with frequent flight of B-1B and B-2 formations to the airspace of South Korea.”
"The large-scale nuclear war exercises and blackmails, which the U.S. staged for a whole year without a break in collaboration with its followers to stifle our republic, make one conclude that the option we have taken was the right one and we should go along the way to the last,” Ja said.
Ja accused the UN Security Council in Monday’s letter of repeatedly "turning a blind eye to the nuclear war exercises of the United States, who is hell bent on bringing a catastrophic disaster to humanity.” He said the exercises raise serious concern about "the double standard” of the UN’s most powerful body.