NoKo: US ‘criminal’

North Korea’s statecontrolled newspaper on Sunday accused the United States of “doubledealing” and “hatching a criminal plot” against Pyongyang, after Washington abruptly canceled a visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Negotiations have been all but deadlocked since President Trump’s summit with North Korean despot Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June.

Pompeo has pressed for tangible steps toward North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear arsenal, while Pyongyang is demanding that Washington first make concessions of its own.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in editorial that US special units based in Japan were staging an air drill aimed at “the infiltration into Pyongyang.”

“Such acts prove that the US is hatching a criminal plot to unleash a war against the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and commit a crime which deserves merciless divine punishment in case the US fails in the scenario of the DPRK’s unjust and brigandish denu- clearization first,” the newpaper said.

A spokesman at the US Embassy in Seoul said he had no information on the drill alleged in the newspaper.

The US military spokesman in South Korea was not available for comment.

The editorial urged Washington to give up the “pointless military gamble” and implement the Singapore agreement, in which the leaders pledged to work toward a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.