North Korea’s parliament adopted a new law in September outlining five conditions under which it will conduct a nuclear strike. In his speech at the event, leader Kim Jong Un added that his country will “never give up” its nuclear weapons even if the U.S. maintained sanctions on the DPRK for “a thousand years.”

North Korea went on to conduct three rounds of short-range ballistic missile tests in the following weeks. These launches came as the U.S. and South Korea conducted their first joint naval drills involving an American aircraft carrier near the peninsula