North Korea calls on US to ‘immediately lift’ sanctions that ‘do more harm than good’

A senior North Korean official used a regional security forum in Beijing on Thursday to call for Washington to “immediately lift” US-led sanctions against Pyongyang, describing them as “confidence-destroying measures” harming the denuclearisation process.

“[The US should] immediately lift the sanctions and the hindrance to confidence-building. Those countries joining the UN sanctions against [North Korea] should pay attention to the positive developments on the Korean peninsula,” Song Il-hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean foreign ministry’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace, told the Xiangshan Forum.

“We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good – they are … confidence-destroying measures.”

Song said the sanctions should be lifted because the situation on the Korean peninsula had changed, with ties between the two Koreas dramatically improving after three rounds of summits and the landmark meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

He said Trump and Kim “recognised that the mutual confidence-building can promote the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” when they met in Singapore in June.

Song was addressing the two-day forum hours after another North Korean delegate, Colonel General Kim Hyong-ryong, vice-minister of the People’s Armed Forces, said Pyongyang wanted to turn the Korean peninsula into “the cradle of peace and prosperity”.