North Korea said it won’t agree to talks with the U.S. and is now focused on its ability to destroy the country with conventional, nuclear and cyber-warfare attacks.
Kim Jong Un’s regime accused the U.S. of “inching closer to the stage of igniting a war of aggression” by stepping up its sanctions, holding military drills with South Korea and predicting the future collapse of the administration, the official Korean Central News Agency said, citing a statement from the National Defense Commission.
“Since the gangster-like U.S. imperialists are blaring that they will ‘bring down’ the DPRK, oblivious of its poor plight facing adverse fate, the army and people of the DPRK cannot but officially notify the Obama administration of the U.S.A. that the DPRK has neither need nor willingness to sit at negotiating table,” KCNA said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The rejection of talks comes after a rush of diplomatic activity by the U.S. and North Korea’s ally China to prod the regime back to the table, potentially for bilateral talks and eventually six-country negotiations that offered aid in return for an end to its nuclear program. Kim raised expectations of progress when he suggested in a Jan. 1 speech he’d be open to meeting South Korea’s President Park Geun Hye.
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported Jan. 28 that Kim would make his first foreign trip in May since coming to power three years ago, to attend celebrations for the 70th anniversary of Russia’s victory in World War II. Park may also attend, setting up what could be the first meeting between two Korean leaders since 2007.
The statement focuses on the U.S. and doesn’t close the door to individual talks with China or South Korea. China’s Defense Minister Chang Wanquan is on a three day visit that started Tuesday to South Korea, and was meeting his counterpart Han Min-koo yesterday to discuss issues including North Korea.
It also comes after North Korea said Feb. 1. the U.S. rejected an invitation for a senior official to visit. The regime asked Sung Kim, special representative for North Korea policy, to Pyongyang during his trip to Asia last month, KCNA said, but the talks didn’t occur because the U.S. refuses to engage in dialogue unless North Korea first agrees to give up its nuclear program.
While Kim sits on a nuclear arsenal estimated at 12 bombs and a standing army of 1.2 million, he faces United Nations allegations of human rights abuses and tighter U.S. economic sanctions after a cyber-attack on a Hollywood studio in November blamed on North Korea.
“If the U.S. ignites a war of aggression against the DPRK by conventional forces, it will fight it by conventional forces of its style,” KCNA said in its latest report. “If the former unleashes a nuclear war against the latter, it will counter it through its own nuclear strikes, and if the former tries to bring down the latter through a cyber warfare, it will react to it with its own preeminent cyber warfare and will thus bring earlier the final ruin of the U.S.” Andrew Davis, Bloomberg
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