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’
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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.
“His remarks are focused on managing the situation on the Korean peninsula amid stability,” Yang said. “The North is likely to send a signal soon concerning the resumption of dialogue.”
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un describes nation’s food situation as ‘tense’
Kim clarified the North’s foreign policy stance and principles “concerning the important international and regional matters” and stressed “the need to further enhance the strategic position and active role of our state and create favourable external climate on our own initiatives”, KCNA said.
“This means Kim is in agony over what position the North should take in the face of mounting rivalry between the US and its traditional ally China in the Asia-Pacific region,” Yang said.
Sung Kim, the new US special representative for North Korea, will meet his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul next week to discuss the North’s denuclearisation.
He is set to arrive in Seoul on Saturday for a five-day trip, his first trip to South Korea since taking office as Washington’s point man on Pyongyang.
Kim Jong-un says Covid-19, typhoons made North Korea’s food situation ‘tense’
He will meet South Korea’s top nuclear envoy, Noh Kyu-duk, and Japanese counterpart, Takehiro Funakoshi, separately on Monday before a threeway meeting the same day.
Biden’s administration has completed its months-long review of policy on North Korea and said it would pursue a “calibrated, practical approach” toward the goal of the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula.
“The three envoys are likely to discuss ways to induce the North back to the dialogue table, such as the reduction or a halt to the US-South Korea military exercises” scheduled in August, Korea National Diplomatic Academy Professor Kim Hyun-wook said.
North Korea regularly condemns the annual military drills as preparations to invade the North.
Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong in March said “war exercises and dialogue, hostility and cooperation can never exist together” when South Korea and the US began their spring military exercises on a smaller scale than usual due to the pandemic.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump made headlines – but little diplomatic progress – with a series of face-to-face meetings with Kim, a policy Biden has said he will not pursue unless the terms change dramatically.
During South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s visit to Washington last month, Biden said he would not meet Kim unless there was a concrete plan for negotiating on Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
And he made a clear criticism of Trump’s chummy relationship with Kim, saying he “would not do what had been done in the recent past. I would not give him all he’s looking for – international recognition”.
The White House said it was now pursuing “a calibrated practical approach” – diplomatic jargon, it seems, for being realistically low-key, while open-minded.
“We understand where previous efforts in the past had difficulties and we’ve tried to learn from those,” a senior White House official said.
North Korea has carried out six atomic bomb tests since 2006. It is under multiple sets of international sanctions for its banned weapons programmes.
A report from US intelligence experts released in April said North Korea could resume nuclear tests this year as a way to force Biden’s administration to return to the negotiating table.
Kim “may take a number of aggressive and potentially destabilising actions to reshape the regional security environment and drive wedges between the United States and its allies – up to and including the resumption of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
