North Korea sees no future benefit in maintaining a relationship between its leader, Kim Jong-Un, and Donald Trump, the country’s state media has said on the two-year anniversary of the pair’s first summit.
US policies prove Washington remains a long-term threat to the North Korean state and its people, foreign minister Ri Son Gwon said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA.
The Singapore summit in June 2018 represented the first time a sitting American president met with a North Korean leader, but the statement that came out of the meeting was light on specifics, opting instead for four general commitments
Ri said in retrospect the Trump administration appears to have been open to talks while seeking to isolate and suffocate North Korea, and threatening it with preemptive nuclear strikes and regime change.
North and South Korea have been divided since the end of the Korean War (1950-53), and except for about a decade ending in 2008, relations between the two have remained frosty. The two nations technically remain in a state of war, since a peace treaty was never signed. There have been occasional outbreaks of violence, most recently in 2010 when 50 people were killed when a South Korean navy corvette was sunk and several islands close to the border were attacked.
This meeting could touch on a formal truce but this is also not the first time North Korea has expressed a willingness to abandon its nuclear ambitions. A deal with the US, Japan and South Korea in the 1990s was meant to give the North civilian nuclear power without the ability to build a weapon, but the reactor was never finished.
North Korea pledged to relinquish its nuclear programme in 2007 in exchange for sanctions relief and fuel, but later pulled out of that agreement and expelled inspectors in 2009.
“Never again will we provide the US chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns,†he said. “Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise.â€
On Thursday North Korea criticised the US for commenting on inter-Korean affairs, and said Washington should stay quiet if it wants the upcoming presidential election to go smoothly.
Ri said North Korea’s desire to open a new cooperative era runs deep as ever, but that the situation on the Korean peninsula is daily taking a turn for the worse.
“The US professes to be an advocate for improved relations with the DPRK, but in fact, it is hell-bent on only exacerbating the situation,†he said.
North Korea will continue to build up its military forces to cope with the threats from the US, Ri said.
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