North Korea steps up attack as US warns Trump could skip talks
North Korean media stepped up their rhetorical attacks on South Korea and joint military exercises with the United States, warning a budding detente involving American president Donald Trump could be in danger.
State media unleashed three strongly worded commentaries slamming Seoul and Washington for the manoeuvres and demanding Seoul take action against defectors it claimed were sending antinorth Korea propaganda leaflets across the border.
The official media had until recently taken a relatively subdued tone amid the North’s diplomatic overtures to its neighbours, including a summit with South Korea’s president last month and plans for leader Kim Jong-un to meet Mr Trump in Singapore on 12 June. That tone first changed last week when the North cut high-level contacts with Seoul and threatened to “reconsider” the Trump summit. One of yesterday’s reports, which came as North Korea allowed an airplane full of foreign journalists into the country to cover the dismantling of its nuclear test site this week, accused Seoul of teaming up with Washington for military drills intended as a show of force and as a “war drill” against the nation.
Mr Trump and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in are due to hold talks in Washington amid uncertainty over the planned Us-north Korea summit.
Ahead of the meeting with Mr Moon, US vice-president Mike Pence warned Mr Kim not to “play” Mr Trump if they met next month.
Mr Pence said in a Fox News interview that such a move would be a “great mistake”.
He also said there was “no question” Mr Trump could walk away from the planned meeting in Singapore.
There has been no indication North Korea would cancel plans to dismantle the test site – an important gesture of goodwill. The North has also not suggested it will go back on its promise to halt underground testing and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. But it did ban South Korean journalists from the trip to the nuclear site and the language used yesterday offered a veiled threat that talks could be harmed.
“Dialogue and sabre-rattling can never go together,” said the commentary published in Minju Joson, one of the country’s four main daily newspapers.
“There are some arguments describing the improvement of the situation on the Korean Peninsula as ‘result of hardline diplomacy’ of the US and ‘result of sustained pressure’,” said another report by the official KCNA news agency.
“It seriously chills the atmosphere of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)us dialogue and is of no help to the development of the situation.”