Seoul, Jan 01 :
Nuclear-armed North Korea wants good relations with the US but could consider a change of approach if Washington maintains its sanctions, leader Kim Jong Un warned in his New Year speech on Tuesday after 12 months of diplomatic rapprochement.
At a summit with US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, the two signed a vaguely worded pledge on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
But progress has since stalled with Pyongyang and Washington arguing over what that means.
“If the US does not keep its promise made in front of the whole world… and insists on sanctions and pressures on our republic,” Kim said on Tuesday, “we may be left with no choice but to consider a new way to safeguard our sovereignty and interests”.
He was willing to meet Trump again at any time, he added, “to produce a result that will be welcomed by the international community”.
The North is demanding sanctions relief — it is subject to multiple measures over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes – and has condemned US insistence on its nuclear disarmament as “gangster-like”.
Washington is pushing to maintain the measures against the North until its “final, fully verified denuclearisation”.
Kim’s speech “expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in negotiations so far”, said former South Korean vice unification minister Kim Hyung-seok.
The North Korean leader “obviously had certain expectations that the US would take certain steps — however rudimentary they are — after the North blew up a nuclear test site and took other steps. But none of them materialised.
“He is faced with this urgent task to improve his ‘socialist economy’ — which is impossible to achieve without lifting of the sanctions.”
In marked contrast with January 1, 2018, when he ordered mass production of nuclear warheads, Kim said the North had “declared that we would no longer produce, test, use or spread our nuclear arsenal”, calling for the US to take “corresponding measures”.
