North Korea says its status as a nuclear weapons state can never be reversed, KCNA says

SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea's status as a nuclear weapons state can never be reversed, no matter how much the United States and its Asian allies demand it, state media reported on Wednesday, citing the powerful sister of its supreme leader.

The comments, which state news agency KCNA said were issued on Tuesday, were likely a response to a joint statement by the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and the United States made on the sidelines of a NATO meeting last week.

The three foreign ministers reaffirmed the "commitment to the complete denuclearization" of North Korea, according to the joint statement.

The position of the North's nuclear weapons state, together with its "substantial and very strong nuclear deterrent" is a result of outside hostile threat and "it does not change no matter how desperately anyone denies," said Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to KCNA.

"We don't care about anyone's denial and recognition and we never change our option," she said. "This is our steadfast choice that can never be reversed by any physical strength or sly artifice."

North Korea has pursued nuclear weapons despite sanctions by the U.N. Security Council over the years since it first conducted an underground nuclear detonation test in 2006.

Since then, it is believed to have developed an arsenal of nuclear weapons, although it has not conducted an atmospheric nuclear test.

It has been a longstanding policy of Washington and its Asian allies to completely dismantle the North's nuclear programme, but analysts believe Pyongyang has gone beyond the point of agreeing to any deal to achieve that.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called the North a "nuclear power" and suggested he would again sit down with its leader Kim Jong Un, with whom he had unprecedented summit meetings during his first term trying to ease security tensions.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Chris Reese and Jamie Freed)