North Korea amends constitution to enshrine nuclear ambitions

The North's rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, unanimously adopted at a two-day meeting which ended on Wednesday the revision of the constitution to stipulate that North Korea "develops highly nuclear weapons to ensure" its "rights to existence" and to "deter war", news agency KCNA said.

"The DPRK's nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout with anything," North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said, addressing the parliament. DPRK are the initials of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He called for "exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means and deploying them in different services," saying the US has gone to extremes in its military provocations with drills and the deployment of strategic assets in the region.