North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) issued a classified directive to senior foreign ministry officials in early April 2026 ordering them to entrench the country’s status as a nuclear-armed state and pursue a multipolar diplomatic strategy as the regime’s primary path forward, according to a Daily NK source in Pyongyang.
The source said the WPK Political Bureau, the party’s top decision-making body, distributed the directive to officials at the division chief level and above within the foreign ministry. Issued in the spirit of the Ninth Party Congress, held earlier this year, the directive lays out a strategic framework centered on three pillars: the irreversible consolidation of nuclear-state status, a confrontational posture toward the United States, and the deepening of ties with anti-Western states beyond Russia and China.
The directive instructs officials to permanently remove the word “denuclearization” from North Korea’s diplomatic vocabulary and to treat “arms reduction” as the baseline for any future negotiations. North Korea will not permit contact with any country that refuses to recognize it as a nuclear state, the directive states.
On relations with the U.S., the directive calls for abandoning any expectation of engagement and makes clear that dialogue will not resume unless Washington first withdraws what Pyongyang describes as its hostile policy. It also instructs officials to exploit ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Europe as pressure tools to dilute U.S. diplomatic attention and resources.
Iran, Russia, and the multipolar alliance strategy
Regarding Russia, the directive goes beyond standard partnership language, describing the relationship as a “community of shared destiny” and calling for military and economic ties to be elevated to a level comparable to a blood alliance. Officials are instructed to leverage the emerging new Cold War order following Russia’s war in Ukraine to secure stable supplies of oil, advanced technology, and food.
Iran is identified as a core diplomatic partner. The directive instructs officials to pursue military solidarity with Tehran, including shared nuclear and missile technology, as a means of increasing the security burden on the United States. Officials are also told to expand multilateral arms trading networks involving third countries in order to erode the effectiveness of international sanctions against North Korea.
The directive further tasks officials with expanding diplomatic outreach to anti-Western states in Africa and Southeast Asia, projecting North Korea’s image as a defender of national sovereignty in those regions.
On internal party organization, the directive restores the WPK’s International Secretary, the party official responsible for executing Kim Jong Un’s foreign strategy, as the supreme authority over all diplomatic affairs. The foreign ministry, the directive states, is to function as a subordinate implementing body operating under the party’s unified chain of command. All diplomatic matters must pass through the International Secretary’s review before action is taken.
“The party made its final judgment that strengthening solidarity with friendly states and actively integrating into multilateral cooperation frameworks is more advantageous for regime stability and economic interests than clinging to improved relations with the U.S.,” the source said. “This is a resolute declaration that it will walk the path of an independent nuclear power without tying itself to the prospects of North Korea-U.S. relations.”
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April 15, 2026 at 10:59PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)