Kim to US: End sanctions or we’ll take ‘new way’
North Korean leader’s US summit offer qualified with further demands to lift crippling embargoes
KIM JONG-UN has offered to hold a new summit with Donald Trump, but warned Pyongyang may pursue a “new way” if Washington does not lift crippling sanctions.
In his New Year speech, the North Korean leader also suggested for the first time that he would no longer produce nuclear weapons. Mr Kim added that relations with the US could progress at a “fast speed” if it made concessions, but he urged Washington not to “misjudge” his patience.
Mr Kim’s annual address offers a rare insight into his thinking and plans for the coming year. This year’s 30-minute speech was shown live on South Korean television – a sign of how relations have improved between the neighbours.
Mr Kim spoke of his satisfaction at his meetings with Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, and expressed his wish to turn the armistice at the end of the 1950-53 war into a full peace treaty.
The bulk of the address focused on economic development, but a key message was reserved for the US president, offering a gesture of peace that could equally be withdrawn if the US did not offer any give-and-take in the denuclearisation process.
In particular, he demanded an end to South Korea’s joint military exercises with the US and to the sanctions damaging North Korea’s economic growth.
“I am ready to sit down again with the US president at any time and will make efforts to produce an outcome that the international community will welcome,” Mr Kim said of a potential second summit with Mr Trump.
However, North Korea might be “compelled to explore new ways” to defend its sovereignty if the United States “seeks to force something upon us unilaterally … and remains unchanged in its sanctions and pressure,” Mr Kim cautioned.
Mr Kim and Mr Trump met for their historic summit in Singapore in June, agreeing to work together towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, but without clearly defining what that meant. In recent months, they have reached a diplomatic impasse, each accusing the other of blocking progress.
Pyongyang has also accused Washington of failing to take corresponding measures after it dismantled a nuclear testing ground and suspended tests.
Those measures were in line with its resolve to “no longer make, use or spread” nuclear weapons, Kim said yesterday, indicating a moratorium on weapons production for the first time.
Although Pyongyang did not conduct nuclear or missile tests last year, satellite images have pointed to continued activity at its related facilities.
Some analysts suggested the speech was intended to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul, which is pushing for faster diplomatic efforts.
They said the North Korean leader appeared to be gearing up to portray the US as the obstacle to progress.
“North Korea has always been adept at putting the onus for action on the US, taking the initiative in a way that forces Washington to either react on Pyongyang’s terms or look like the obstacle to progress,” Mintaro Oba, a former US diplomat specialising in the Koreas, told The Daily Telegraph.
“Kim Jong Un drew from that playbook in his speech today by offering to take actions that might be popular in South Korea, but would require US consent to lift sanctions. This puts both Seoul and Washington in a bind.”