North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will resume nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests if the United States refuses to ease sanctions, an envoy announced amid a diplomatic shake-up in Pyongyang.
“We found no reason to be unilaterally bound any longer by the commitment that the other party fails to honor,” Ju Yong Chol, an official at North Korea’s mission to the United Nations, said today at a conference in Geneva.
Kim halted nuclear missile and intercontinental ballistic missile tests in the lead-up to the 2018 Singapore summit with President Trump, who agreed likewise to suspend large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea. Subsequent negotiations over the regime’s nuclear weapons program broke down despite a second summit between the two leaders, leading to a stalemate as Kim demands U.S. concessions even while American hawks worry that Trump isn’t applying enough economic pressure.
“If the United States tries to enforce unilateral demands and persists in imposing sanctions, North Korea may be compelled to seek a new path,” Ju said at the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament.
That threat coincides with reports that North Korean officials have notified foreign embassies in Pyongyang that the regime has a new foreign minister. Outgoing top diplomat Ri Yong Ho, who fumed over U.S. refusals to lift sanctions by describing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “a poisonous plant of American diplomacy” in August, reportedly is being replaced by Ri Son Gwon, a former military official.
The diplomatic newcomer has been described as having a “rough, unpolished, bully-like style” in dialogues with South Korea, but it’s not clear what his arrival at the foreign ministry portends for the negotiations that have stalled. “Not much is known about this guy,” a source familiar with the denuclearization talks told the Washington Examiner.
That uncertainty makes Ju’s comments in Geneva all the more intriguing for North Korea observers. “If the U.S. persists in such hostile policy toward the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Ju said.
American diplomats hope that North Korea will jump-start the denuclearization talks, although a recent meeting between the two sides ended with the North Koreans leaving early and complaining that “the U.S. has not discarded its old stance” about requiring nuclear concessions before providing sanctions relief.
“What we hope is that they will do the right thing and come back to the table and try to work out an arrangement whereby we can fulfill that pledge that was made by President Trump and Chairman Kim to denuclearize,” Robert Wood, the State Department’s ambassador to the U.N.’s disarmament conference, said Tuesday in response to Ju’s comments.
