"The possible outbreak of a new war on the Korean Peninsula is contained not because of the U.S.'s mercy on the DPRK," Kim said. "It is because our state is a growing reliable deterrent that can control the hostile forces in the attempts of a military invasion."
A state of war has existed since 1950 between the DPRK on one side and South Korea and the United States on the other. When the Japanese Empire surrendered to the Allies in 1945, ending World War II, the Soviet Union had only liberated half of Korea, which was a Japanese colony. Consequently, a socialist government prevailed in the north, and a capitalist government formed in the south, which passed to American control. The divide erupted in a civil war in 1949 that the North threatened to win, but a US-led military intervention in 1950 pushed the communist Korean People's Army back almost to the Chinese border.