The bonhomie between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is nearing a key deadline showing new signs of strain.
Trump urged Kim over the weekend to “act quickly” to get a nuclear deal done, suggesting the two leaders could meet again “soon.” His comments came hours after North Korea ruled out nuclear talks without a policy change by the U.S. and reported on a military drill observed by Kim himself.
Veteran North Korea nuclear adviser, Kim Kye Gwan, told Trump that Pyongyang will no longer give him “things to boast about,” the state’s official KCNA news agency on Monday quoted him as saying. He added North Korea is no longer interested in talks that the U.S. “uses to buy time.”
Trump and Kim Jong Un, who have previously displayed what Pyongyang calls “mysteriously wonderful chemistry,” appear to be going in different directions as the clock ticks down. Kim has given Trump until the end of the year to ease up on sanctions or risk him taking a “new path,” meaning a possible escalation of military tensions during the US presidential campaign.
A senior US Defense Department official said Monday the Trump administration has left the door open to talks but North Korea’s attitude so far has not been helpful. Washington wants Pyongyang back at the table and to abide by its pledge to work toward denuclearization, the official said.
But North Korea has turned a cold shoulder to the talks, with its Korean Central News Agency on Monday citing Kim Yong Chol, a top aide to its leader as saying: “We have nothing pressing and have no intention to sit at the table with the tricky US.” There can be no trust until America drops its “hostile policy” toward North Korea, said the aide, who visited Trump at the White House in January as part of a rare North Korean delegation to Washington.
North Korean often uses the state-run media to issue its highest public pronouncements to the outside world, and has published statements in recent days painting a bleak picture of the nuclear discussions. The talks have accomplished little since Trump and Kim Jong Un agreed to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in their first meeting in June 2018.
After more than a year of talks and three Trump-Kim Jong Un meetings, the two sides remain divided on issues from sanctions relief to disarmament. Even though North Korea hasn’t taken any major steps to give up its weapons, Kim has won concessions from Trump that include canceling some US-South Korean joint military drills that have drawn Pyongyang’s anger.
North Korea hasn’t explained what Kim Jong Un intends to do on his “new path,” although the regime has often referred to his decision to halt tests of nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles two years ago. In May, North Korea resumed tests of shorter-range ballistic missiles.
Kim may feel less pressure to cut a deal because he’s been successfully poking holes in the global web of sanctions against North Korea. Still Kim will be hard pressed to find a better US negotiating partner than Trump, who shrugged off long-standing US policy to meet with the North Korean leader in the first place.
“North Korea knows that the best way to approach the US in an attempt for sanctions relief is to start from the top,” said Choi Soon-mi, a professor on North Korean studies at Ajou Institute of Unification.
Trump offered an unexpected response of his own on Twitter, mocking Biden as “sleepy and very slow,” but “somewhat better than” a rabid dog.
The North Korea warning about US nuclear talks came despite the US’s decision to suspend another round of military drills with South Korea. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on the sidelines of a regional security conference that Washington and Seoul had “jointly decided to postpone this month’s combined flying training event” after “close consultation and careful consideration.”
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