Whether North Korea conducts further nuclear tests depends on the United States' reaction, North Korea's number-two leader told Japan's Kyodo News agency on Wednesday.
Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's parliament, said his country would also decide whether it would return to the stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear programme depending on how the United States treats the communist state, Kyodo reported.
"If the United States continues to take a hostile attitude and apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that," Kim told a Kyodo delegation in Pyongyang in the first comments by a top North Korean official since the country announced Monday that it had conducted its first nuclear test.