North Korea has issued a warning that a potential summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump is contingent upon the U.S.’s actions, according to a new report.
“Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at a nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” Choe Son Hui, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, said in a statement Thursday local time, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“In case the U.S. offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-U.S. summit,” she said.
Pyongyang signaled last week that the historic meeting between Trump and Kim, set for June 12, could be in jeopardy. The North cut off communications with the South over a joint U.S.-South Korea military training exercise and indicated it would not give up its nuclear weapons.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in met Trump in Washington on Tuesday, where Trump indicated there was a possibility the summit would not happen next month in Singapore.
However, Trump’s most recent remarks conveyed optimism that the meeting would still take place.
“Right now, we’re looking at it, we’re talking about it. And they’re talking to us,” Trump said in an interview scheduled to air on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday. “We have certain conditions. We’ll see what happens.”
“But there’s a good chance. I mean, it’d be a great thing for North Korea. If that happens, it would be a great thing for North Korea. Listen, it would be a great thing for the world, so we’ll see what happens,” he added.
***
Here is the full text of the KCNA statement:
At an interview with Fox News on May 21, U.S. Vice-President Pence made unbridled and impudent remarks that north Korea might end like Libya, military option for north Korea never came off the table, the U.S. needs complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, and so on.
As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president.
If he is vice-president of “single superpower” as is in name, it will be proper for him to know even a little bit about the current state of global affairs and to sense to a certain degree the trends in dialogue and the climate of détente.
We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.
Soon after the White House National Security Adviser Bolton made the reckless remarks, Vice-President Pence has again spat out nonsense that the DPRK would follow in Libya’s footstep. It is to be underlined, however, that in order not to follow in Libya’s footstep, we paid a heavy price to build up our powerful and reliable strength that can defend ourselves and safeguard peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.
In view of the remarks of the U.S. high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us.
To borrow their words, we can also make the U.S. taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.
Before making such reckless threatening remarks without knowing exactly who he is facing, Pence should have seriously considered the terrible consequences of his words.
It is the U.S. who has asked for dialogue, but now it is misleading the public opinion as if we have invited them to sit with us. I only wonder what is the ulterior motive behind its move and what is it the U.S. has calculated to gain from that.
We will neither beg the U.S. for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.
Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.
In case the U.S. offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-U.S. summit.
