North Korea has slammed the Group of Seven industrialized nations for calling for Pyongyang’s denuclearization, insisting that it will continue to upgrade its nuclear forces.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released the press statement by a spokesperson of the foreign ministry on Monday, a few days after the G7 foreign ministers demanded that the DPRK “abandon all its nuclear weapons and any other weapons of mass destruction as well as ballistic missile program.”

Pyongyang “expresses a serious concern” over the G7 “taking issue with the possession of the just war deterrence of a sovereign state,” the statement reads, labeling