North Korea isn’t interested in continuing to work with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on nuclear discussions because officials want someone who is “more careful and mature in communicating.”
The state-run Korean Central News Agency reports that foreign ministry official Kwon Jong Gun has accused Pompeo of “letting loose reckless remarks and sophism of all kinds against us every day.”
Kwon said Pompeo was responsible for the unraveling of discussions between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump at their February summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. Trump walked away from the meeting, dedicated to talks about North Korean denuclearization, with no deal after Kim insisted on full sanctions relief for dismantling only a small part of his nuclear program. The two leaders first met to discuss the issue in June 2018 in Singapore.
Kwon argued that as a result, Pompeo’s involvement in future discussions would make the talks “entangled.”
“Therefore, even in the case of possible resumption of the dialogue with the US, I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but another person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us,” Kwon said.
The comments came hours after North Korea touted the testing of a new “tactical guided weapon,” marking the country’s first weapons test since November 2018.
