Kim Jong-un gathers party leaders to discuss ‘tense situation’ as Mike Pompeo takes aim at North Korean ‘tyrant’

Kim and Trump failed to reach agreement at their second summit in Hanoi on walking back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme

Both sides expressed willingness to talk further and Trump has repeatedly said he maintains good relations with Kim

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:39am, 10 Apr 2019Updated: 7:51pm, 10 Apr 2019

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called a full meeting on Wednesday of a top committee of the ruling Workers’ Party to address what he described as the “prevailing tense situation”, state media reported.

The gathering of the Central Committee comes after Kim’s Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump broke up without agreement in February, and as South Korean President Moon Jae-in flies to Washington for talks with the US leader.

But the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) appeared to indicate that Kim may be focusing on Pyongyang’s continued push to develop its economy.

In a meeting with senior officials on Tuesday, Kim ordered them to display “an attitude befitting the masters of the revolution and construction under the prevailing tense situation and thus follow through on the new strategic line of the Party”, KCNA reported.

Last April, Kim declared that the ruling party’s “new strategic line” would be “socialist economic construction” and its quest for nuclear development was complete.

Kim made “a deep analysis of the matters pending urgent solution in the party and state”, KCNA said, adding that at Wednesday’s meeting the central committee will “decide the new orientation and ways of struggle in line with the need of the prevailing revolutionary situation”. It coincides with the opening of the country’s rubber stamp legislature on Thursday.

Trump and Kim held their first landmark summit in Singapore last June, where the North Korean leader signed a vaguely worded deal on the “denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.