North Korea's state-run radio reported for the first time Sunday that the communist country has nuclear weapons, but South Korean officials doubted the credibility of the report

Pyongyang Radio reported in a Korean-language report that the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons due to nuclear threats by U.S. imperialists," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors broadcasts from the North. Some took the report as the North's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Until now, North Korea had claimed that it was "entitled to have nuclear weapons and more powerful weapons than that to protect its sovereignty from U.S. threats." But on Monday, South Korean officials were skeptical that the report represented a change in North Korea's official position on nuclear weapons, which has been to neither confirm nor deny that the country has them. Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of oil every year until the reactors were built. But in September, the North acknowledged to visiting U.S. diplomats that it had a uranium-enriching program to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea says the United States violated the accord first, citing delays in the reactor project.