North Korea threatens showdown
Kim aide calls Pence a ‘dummy' and suggests summit in doubt
North Korea is threatening to reconsider Kim Jong Un’s participation in a summit with US President Donald Trump next month, saying that it is up to the United States to decide whether it wants to “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown”.
The punchy statement comes a day after Trump suggested there was a “substantial chance” that he would postpone or cancel the summit, scheduled to be held in Singapore on June 12, if North Korea did not meet “certain conditions”.
A close aide to Kim unleashed a torrent of invective against the Trump Administration, calling US Vice-President Mike Pence a “political dummy” for remarks he made to Fox News on Tuesday.
“As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US Vice-President,” said Choe Son Hui, a vice-foreign minister who was previously the regime’s top official in charge of relations with the US. The daughter of a former premier, she is also thought to have direct access to Kim.
On Tuesday, just days after a North Korean broadside at national security adviser John Bolton for his mention of a “Libya model” for the denuclearisation of the North, Pence doubled down on the analogy. “As the President made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn’t make a deal,” Pence told Fox News. Asked if this
could be interpreted as a threat, he said: “Well, I think it’s more of a fact.”
As preparations for the summit continue, both Bolton and Pence have touted the “Libya model,” whereby Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons programme in 2003 in return for sanctions relief. A few years later Gaddafi was overthrown and brutally killed by his opponents in 2011.
Trump has said that he would guarantee Kim’s safety and that he would stay in charge of a country that could benefit from foreign investment if it were prepared to give up its nukes.
Choe said comparisons with Libya betrayed Pence’s lack of knowledge.
“We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with
them.” Libya, like Iran, did not have an operational nuclear weapons programme when it struck its deal with Western powers. North Korea sees itself as a nuclear state that should be treated as an equal to the US, not a rogue regime to be forced into a corner.
If the US “offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts,” Choe said, she would suggest Kim reconsider attending the Singapore summit.
“We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us,” she said, returning to the military threats that were the hallmark of bilateral relations in 2017.
“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision. . . of the US.”