U.S. Forces Japan Backtracks on N.Korea's 'Nuclear State' Tag

The U.S. Forces Japan has promised the U.S. Forces Korea to drop the description of North Korea as a "declared nuclear state," which upset some sticklers for official nomenclature.

"The USFJ seems to have recognized the controversy caused by the video," a military source here said on Thursday. "They've told us that they will revise the problematic parts."

The YouTube clip names North Korea alongside China and Russia as one of "three declared nuclear states" in East Asia and puts the number of the North's nuclear warheads as "15+."

But while that sounds like a harmless description of the facts, it has irked people who believe that the label somehow empowers the North.

The U.S. and South Korea have been performing an elaborate verbal fan dance whereby they insist that North Korea must denuclearize without saying in so many words that it is a nuclear-armed state.