Pyongyang would consider another summit between Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump “useless” unless the US dropped its hostile rhetoric, Foreign Ministry advisor Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement Monday.
“If the US does not really want to let go of its dialogue with us, it should make a decision to withdraw its hostile policy of viewing us as an enemy,” Kim said, his remarks quoted by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency.
Commenting on President Trump’s Sunday tweet urging North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to “act quickly” and “get the [denuclearization] deal done,” in which Trump promised to “See you soon!”, the foreign ministry advisor said that while he interpreted the tweet as a possible “signal” for a new summit, Pyongyang was not interested in summits for the sake of summits.
“We are not interested in such useless talks anymore. We will not give anything to the US president to brag about when we have received nothing in return,” Kim said, adding that Pyongyang should be “rewarded for what President Trump touts as his achievements.”
Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump and other senior North Korean and US officials have held several rounds of talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme. The latest talks, held in Sweden last month between North Korean chief negotiator Kim Myong-gil and US negotiator Stephen Biegun, ended in failure after the North Korean side walked out, accusing their US counterparts of coming to the meeting empty-handed.
Last month, North Korean officials warned that the friendly personal relations between the two countries’ leaders were no guarantee in preventing the aggravation of relations between the two countries.
Kim and Trump have met three times – in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in February, and at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea in June, with Trump becoming the first US president to ever step across the border into North Korea. The Singapore summit was touted as a major diplomatic breakthrough between the two nations, but subsequent meetings have failed to lead to an agreement on North Korea’s nuclear programme.
The United States and its allies have sought to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and reduce tensions which have been prevalent in the area since the Korean War of 1950-1953. Pyongyang has sought assurances at non-intervention, sanctions relief, and the end of provocative military exercises between the US and South Korea, with about 23,500 US troops still stationed in the Asian country over 65 after the end of the war.
