North Korea said on Tuesday that the relationship between its chief Kim Jong one and President Donald Trump is “not bad”, the United States must accept the isolated country as a state of nuclear weapons.
Rejecting the idea of new talks on denuclearization, Kim’s powerful sister said that the reality had changed since Trump’s first term.
“The year 2025 is neither 2018 nor 2019,” said Kim Yo Jong, who speaks for his brother, in a statement by the North Korean news agency KCNA.
“Recognition of the irreversible position of the PRDC as a state of nuclear weapons and the difficult fact that its capacities and its geopolitical environment have radically changed should be a prerequisite for the prediction and the thought of everything in the future,” she said, using the abbreviation for the formal name of North Korea, the Republic of the Democratic People of Korea.
Although Kim has recognized that the “personal relationship” between Trump and Kim is “not bad”, she said that using it to continue the denuclearization of North Korea would be considered a “mockery”.
“If the United States does not accept modified reality and persist in the failed past, the RPDC-US meeting will remain a” hope “on the American side,” she said in the press release, which did not mention Trump by name.
Trump, who often talked about his “big relationship” with Kim, met the North Korean leader in person three times and expressed his opening to the resumption of diplomacy.
Although Trump and Kim have signed an agreement in principle on denuclearization at their Singapore summit in 2018, talks were broken down the following year after the United States refused to give repair to sanctions in North Korea.
North Korea has since advanced its nuclear and ballistic missile programs thanks to arms tests and a security partnership with Russia – changes mentioned by Kim.
The State Department said last month that the Trump administration was determined to carry out the “complete denuclearization” of North Korea.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments sent by email overnight. A White House official told Reuters that denuclearization had remained the goal.
The office of the new president of South Korea, Lee Jae-Myung, said on Tuesday that South Korea supported the idea of American renewals in American Korea.
South Korea and the United States “will continue to engage in a communication and close cooperation on the global policy of North Korea, including the potential resumption of American Dialogue in American Korea,” he said in a statement.
Kim’s declaration was his second in as many days, after rejecting the awareness efforts of Lee, which is considered more open to the repair of relations with the North than its conservative predecessor.
“Whatever the policy that is adopted and whatever the proposal made to Seoul, we are not interested and there is neither the reason to meet nor the question to be discussed,” she said in the statement on Monday.
She also criticized the “Blind Trust” of South Korea in her longtime American alliance and her next joint military exercises that North Korea considers a rehearsal for the invasion.
The South Korean Minister of Unification, Chung Dong-Young, who is responsible for managing relations with the North, said on Monday that he would recommend reducing or suspending American South Korea exercises to promote commitment with Pyongyang.
Kim Yo Jong’s rare twin statements reflect “North Korea’s intention to take an initiative to direct the conversation on the question of the Korean peninsula, whether through dialogue or confrontation,” News Yang Moo-Jin, president of the North Korean Studies in Seoul, told NBC.
The message to South Korea used a relatively moderate language, said Yang, while the American message involved the potential for talks on the reduction of nuclear weapons rather than denuclearization, suggesting that North Korea is trying to assess the response of the two countries.
The fact that Kim recognized the relationship between Trump and his brother “suggests both the desire to prevent additional deterioration in the situation and a possible signal for another summit,” said Yang.
