According to the DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency, the country conducted an underground nuclear test on Oct. 9. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Oct. 14 to condemn the test and urge Pyongyang to eliminate all its nuclear weapons and return to the six-party talks aimed to seek the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The unidentified expert noted that under the NPT, only countries that produced and tested nuclear weapons or other nuclear bombing devices before Jan. 1, 1967 were recognized legal in possessing nuclear weapons, and only the Security Council's five permanent members qualified for this requirement at that time.

"This rule may seem unfair for those countries who want to possess nuclear weapons, yet the NPT also requires countries with nuclear weapons to conduct irreversible nuclear disarmament," the expert said.

In this regard, the NPT was balanced, for it prevented nuclear proliferation on one hand and promoted nuclear disarmament on the other, he noted.

The DPRK's quitting of the Treaty and conducting of a nuclear test challenged the authority of the NPT, a treaty which played an important role in prohibiting nuclear proliferation and facilitating the peaceful use of nuclear energy, the expert said.

The international community has made strenuous efforts to seek a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the Peninsula's nuclear issue, the expert said.

At the fourth round of the six-party talks in 2005, the parties involved -- the DPRK, China, the United States, South Korea, Russia and Japan, established a general aim toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

Although the DPRK and the United States still lacked the mutual trust for a breakthrough in solving the nuclear standoff in the near future, the expert said, the six-party talks had made important achievements and remained to be an effective channel to solve the DPRK's nuclear issue.