By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea said on Tuesday the United States must accept that reality has changed since the countries’ summit meetings in the past, and no future dialogue would end its nuclear program, state media KCNA reported.
Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who is believed to speak for her brother, said she conceded that the personal relationship between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump “is not bad.”
But if Washington intended to use a personal relationship as a way to end the North’s nuclear weapons program, the effort would only be the subject of “mockery,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by KCNA.
“If the U.S. fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-U.S. meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the U.S. side,” she said, referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea’s capabilities as a nuclear weapons state and the geopolitical environment have radically changed since Kim and Trump held talks three times during the U.S. president’s first term, she said.
“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state … will be thoroughly rejected,” she said.
Highlighting the improving ties between North Korea and Russia, another KCNA report noted the resumption of the first direct passenger flight between Pyongyang and Moscow in decades that arrived in the North Korean capital on Monday.
The flight resumed “amid the daily-growing many-sided visits and contact between” North Korea and Russia, KCNA confirmed on Tuesday.
North Korea has provided troops and arms for Russia’s war in Ukraine, a move that has been criticised by the U.S. and its allies that have in turn accused Moscow of giving technological help to Pyongyang in exchange for its support.
Asked about the North Korean statement, a White House official said Trump was still committed to the goal he had for the three summit meetings he held with Kim in his first term.
“The president retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully de-nuclearised North Korea,” the White House official told Reuters.
At their first meeting in Singapore in 2018, Trump and Kim signed an agreement in principle to make the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. The subsequent summit in Hanoi next year broke down due to a disagreement over removing international sanctions that had been imposed against Pyongyang.
Trump has said he has a “great relationship” with Kim, and the White House has said the president is receptive to the idea of communicating with the reclusive North Korean leader.
(Reporting by Jack Kim, Joyce Lee in Seoul and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates, Ed Davies and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
