Kim still keen to talk

North Korea said yesterday that it’s still willing to sit down for talks with the United States “at any time, at any format” just hours after President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled his planned summit with the North’s leader Kim Jong Un.

The statement by ViceForeign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, a longtime nuclear negotiator and senior diplomat, said the North is “willing to give the US time and opportunities” to reconsider talks that had been set for June 12 in Singapore.

Earlier comments by South Korean President Moon Jae In, seen as a driving force behind the summit and just returned from a meeting with Trump in Washington, suggested that Seoul, a top US ally and host to 28,500 US troops, was blindsided by Trump’s cancellation. Moon said he was “very perplexed” at Trump’s announcement that he was cancelling the summit because of what the US President said was North Korea’s “tremendous anger and open hostility”. Moon pushed for direct talks between Trump and Kim to get things back on track.

Meanwhile, Kim made good on his promise to demolish his country’s nuclear test site, which was formally closed in a series of huge explosions as a small group of foreign journalists watched.

The explosions at the test site deep in the mountains of the North’s sparsely populated northeast were supposed to build confidence ahead of the planned summit.