North Korea has again blamed the United States for the failure of the February summit in Vietnam between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, saying there will be no progress until Washington changes its approach to denuclearization talks.
“Unless the United States puts aside the current method of calculation and comes forward with a new method of calculation, the DPRK-U.S. dialogue will never be resumed and by extension, the prospect for resolving the nuclear issue will be much gloomy,” an unnamed North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“We hereby make it clear once again that the United States would not be able to move us even an inch,” the official said, according to an English translation on a KCNA monitoring site. “The further its mistrust and hostile acts towards the DPRK grow, the fiercer our reaction will be.”
The escalation in the war of words comes as Trump prepares to travel to Japan this weekend for a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan departs next week to attend an Asian security conference in Singapore and consult with allies in South Korea and Japan. The lack of progress in getting North Korea to show a willingness to give up its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon arsenals is expected to be high on their agendas.
“North Korea, through recent missile tests and now a statement claiming it will never resume negotiations unless America changes its tough disarmament demands, is now showing the world a new post-Hanoi Summit diplomatic strategy: its own style of ‘maximum pressure,’” said Harry Kazianis, a Korea expert at the Washington-based Center for the National Interest.
“Such a bold statement is clearly a warning to America, implying that if Washington will not at least compromise to some extent, that Pyongyang will only apply more and more pressure.”
[Previous coverage: North Korea wants Pompeo replaced at the nuclear negotiating table]
Kazianis said he would not be surprised if North Korea fired off more missiles just as Trump arrived in the region.
North Korea says the Hanoi talks broke down over what it called “the arbitrary and dishonest position taken by the United States” in demanding “unilateral disarmament,” which it said “deliberately pushed the talks to a rupture.”
Kim was said to have been embarrassed when the United States rejected out of hand his demand for complete sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling a single nuclear facility.
Kim has since given the Trump administration until the end of the year to come up with new terms for a deal.
