All eyes on ‘new way’ in Kim Jong-un’s New Year speech

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will give his set-piece New Year speech tomorrow, an opportunity to flesh out the nuclear-armed nation’s threat to seek a “new way” forward after the expiration of its year-end deadline for US sanctions relief. Ahead of the address, Kim told a meeting of top ruling party officials that “positive and offensive measures for fully ensuring the sovereignty and security of the country” were needed, the state news agency KCNA reported yesterday. Nuclear talks between the North and the US have been largely stalled since the collapse of a February summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi. Pyongyang has been demanding the easing of international sanctions imposed on it over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, while Washington is insisting it takes more tangible steps towards giving them up. The North has not so far specified the “new way” it would adopt if the US does not offer fresh concessions by the end of the end, and Kim is expected to make it clearer. Earlier this month China and Russia – the North’s biggest economic partners – proposed loosening UN sanctions against Pyongyang, and analysts say Kim is likely to seek to exploit rivalries between Washington, Beijing and Moscow. The “new way” was more likely to be an old way with denuclearisation firmly off the table, said Henri Feron, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in the US. “What North Korea refers to as a new path is new in the sense that it will differ from its relatively engaging posture the past two years, but will actually be a return to the posture it maintained notably in the Obama era,” he told AFP.