North Korea must prepare for ‘dialogue and confrontation’ with US, Kim Jong-un says
- Pyongyang has previously accused Biden of pursuing a ‘hostile policy’
- In 2019, the North said Biden should be ‘beaten to death with a stick’
At a plenary meeting of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Thursday, Kim outlined his strategy for relations with Washington, and the “policy tendency of the newly emerged US administration”, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Kim “stressed the need to get prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially to get fully prepared for confrontation in order to protect the dignity of our state” and reliably guarantee a “peaceful environment”, KCNA reported.
The North Korean leader “called for sharply and promptly reacting to and coping with the fast-changing situation and concentrating efforts on taking stable control of the situation on the Korean peninsula”, the agency said.
Pyongyang has already accused Biden of pursuing a “hostile policy” and making a “big blunder” by saying he would deal with the threat posed by the North’s nuclear programme “through diplomacy as well as stern deterrence”.
In 2019, the North said Biden should be “beaten to death with a stick”.
Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said Kim’s statement is conspicuously devoid of any words expressing hostility toward either the US or the South or touting the North’s nuclear weapons.