SEOUL (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his past negotiations with the United States (US) only confirmed Washington’s “unchangeable” hostility toward his country and described his nuclear build-up as the only way to counter external threats, state media said yesterday.
Kim spoke on Thursday at a defence exhibition where North Korea displayed some of its most powerful weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to target the US mainland as well as artillery systems and drones, according to text and photos published by the North’s Korean Central News Agency.
While meeting with army officers last week, he had pledged a “limitless” expansion of his military nuclear programme.
Kim has yet to comment directly on Donald Trump’s re-election as US president. During his first term, Trump held three highly orchestrated summits with the North Korean leader in 2018 and 2019, before the diplomacy collapsed over disagreements on exchanging a relaxation of US-led economic sanctions with North Korean steps to wind down its nuclear programme.
During the speech at the exhibition, Kim touched on the failed summits without naming Trump.
“We have already gone as far as possible with the US with negotiations, and what we ended up confirming was not a superpower’s will for coexistence, but a thorough position based on force and an unchangeable invasive and hostile policy” toward North Korea, Kim said.
Kim accused the US of raising military pressure on North Korea by strengthening military cooperation with regional allies and increasing the deployment of “strategic strike means,” apparently a reference to major US assets such as long-range bombers, submarines and aircraft carriers.
He called for accelerated efforts to advance the capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, saying the country’s only guarantee of security is to build up the “strongest defence power that can overwhelm the enemy”. Kim’s expanding nuclear weapons and missile programmes include various weapons targeting South Korea and Japan and longer-range missiles that have demonstrated the range to reach the US mainland.
Analysts said Kim’s nuclear push is aimed at eventually pressuring Washington into accepting North Korea as a nuclear power and to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
