North Korea has conducted internal lectures criticizing the U.S. arrest and seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as a “U.S. act of gangsterism,” while once again justifying Pyongyang’s bolstering of its nuclear arsenal.
A Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province said recently that authorities “conducted a lecture for teachers in Hoesang district, Hamhung, in the afternoon of Jan. 5.” He said the lecture “justified North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, with the lecturer saying that the United States kidnapped the president of Venezuela and stressing that we don’t submit to U.S. threats because of our national power.”
According to the source, the lecturer criticized Maduro’s arrest as a “clear violation of sovereignty by the United States and an act of gangsterism.” He said that “given how conflicts around the world and U.S. invasions are worsening, we must bolster our nuclear strength one thousand-fold.”
In particular, the lecturer said that “because our self-defense as a strong military state has increased under the wise leadership of the Great Leader Kim Jong Un, enemies can’t touch us.”
The lecture also mentioned the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine USS Greeneville’s entry into the port of Busan, calling it “proof that the U.S. nuclear threat continues” and that “all U.S. moves are a standing nuclear threat toward us.”
Audience more curious about Venezuela than nuclear justifications
The lecture was convened to emphasize once again the justification for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, but contrary to the authorities’ intention, the teachers who listened to it were more focused on whether the United States had actually captured President Maduro.
“Rather than the repeated justifications for nuclear weapons, it really felt like they were more interested in the international situation, namely, in what the heck happened in Venezuela.”
A lecture along the same lines was held at the Hamhung Youth Electric Appliances Plant.
“That lecture also emphasized the need for nuclear weapons and pride in our strengthened national defense,” the source said. “However, the young people who listened to it focused more on whether the Venezuelan president had really been kidnapped and the facts of the case, rather than on the lecture’s main subject.”
“How can you kidnap the president of another country?” the young people wondered. “If it’s true, the United States must be truly powerful.”
“Neither the teachers nor the young people cared much about the slogans and propaganda they’ve heard every lecture, but instead took interest in the Venezuelan president’s arrest,” the source said. “Contrary to the state’s intention, the lecture appears to have proven an opportunity to reawaken the public to just how powerful the United States is.”
In a Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s response to a reporter’s question carried by North Korea’s state-run KCNA on Jan. 4, the day after the United States arrested Maduro and brought him to New York, North Korea slammed the U.S. operation.
“The incident is another example that clearly confirms once again the rogue and brutal nature of the U.S. which the international community has so frequently witnessed for a long time,” the spokesperson said. “The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK strongly denounces the U.S. hegemony-seeking act committed in Venezuela as the most serious form of encroachment of sovereignty and as a wanton violation of the UN Charter and international laws with respect for sovereignty, non-interference and territorial integrity as their main purpose.”
Even though North Korea has not run news on what happened in Venezuela in the Rodong Sinmun or Korea Central TV—media consumed by local rather than international audiences—it has mentioned the incident in lectures, making active use of it in its propaganda to justify nuclear weapons development.
North Koreans living in regions along the border with China who learned about the Maduro seizure say that “nothing like the U.S. arrest of the Venezuelan president could ever happen in North Korea,” and that the United States “can’t invade since it’s afraid because we have nuclear weapons.”
January 22, 2026 at 12:11AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)