North Korea snubs Trump’s birthday wish to its leader
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Saturday that President Donald Trump had sent birthday greetings to its leader, Kim Jong Un, but added that the rapport between the two leaders would not help resolve their countries’ nuclear standoff.
Ever since his first summit meeting with Kim, in June 2018, Trump has repeatedly flaunted his “good relationship” with the North’s leader, calling Kim “smart” and even going so far as to say that he and Kim “fell in love.”
The two leaders have also exchanged letters and dispatched special envoys to each other’s capitals, but talks on how to denuclearize the North remain deadlocked.
On Saturday, Kim Kye Gwan, a senior aide to Kim, confirmed that Trump had sent a personal letter to Kim for his birthday. (Kim is believed to have turned 36 on Wednesday.) He also acknowledged that the “personal relations” between Kim and Trump were “not bad,” but said Kim “would not discuss the state affairs on the basis of such personal feelings. ”
“Although Chairman Kim Jong Un has good personal feelings about President Trump, they are, in the true sense of the word, ‘personal,’” the official said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Chung Eui-yong, the national security adviser for President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, told reporters on Friday that Trump asked Seoul this past week to relay his birthday greetings to Kim.
North Korea also hardened its position toward Washington on Saturday, calling the past 1½ years of on-and-off negotiations a “lost time.”
The denuclearization talks collapsed when Kim and Trump met in Vietnam in February 2018 for a second summit meeting and Trump rejected Kim’s offer to dismantle one of the North’s nuclear fuel-production facilities if Washington lifted international sanctions. Trump insisted on a more comprehensive rollback of North Korea’s nuclear program.
Kim said recently that he no longer expected the United States to ease sanctions. Instead, he vowed to expand his country’s nuclear force, warning that North Korea no longer felt bound by a moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.
“There will never be such negotiations as that in Vietnam, in which we proposed exchanging a core nuclear facility of the country for the lift of some U.N. sanctions,” Kim Kye Gwan said Saturday. “We know well about the way we should go and will go on our way.”