Conversation between Soviet Ambassador in North Korea Vasily Moskovsky and North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Seong-cheol

In accordance with instructions, [I] visited Minister of Foreign Affairs comrade Pak Seong-cheol [Pak Song Chol] and informed him about the question of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Pak Seong-cheol thanked [me] for the information and expressed the following considerations:

First, the control question has been raised again. One cannot rule out the possibility that the USA has already sold the secrets of the manufacture of nuclear weapons to the F[ederal] R[republic] of G[ermany], and then showed an ‘initiative’ by calling for a treaty by which the Soviet Union would not be able to do the same thing with regard to other socialist countries.

Second, who can impose such a treaty on countries that do not have nuclear weapons, but are perhaps successfully working in that direction? Recently, said Pak Seong-cheol, I think this spring, I read a small report by the A[ssociated] P[ress] that expressed a supposition to the effect that the Chinese comrades, for instance, are successfully working in this direction. I do not know from which sources this information originated, but I think – why, indeed, wouldn’t the Chinese comrades work on this?

The Americans hold on to Taiwan, to South Korea and South Vietnam, blackmail the people with their nuclear weapons, and, with their help, rule on these continents and do not intend to leave. Their possession of nuclear weapons, and the lack thereof in our hands, objectively helps them, therefore, to eternalize their rule. They have a large stockpile, and we are to be forbidden even to think about the manufacture of nuclear weapons? I think that in such case the advantage will be on the Americans’ side.