North Korea’s communist regime has continued to excoriate President Donald Trump for walking out of a meeting with brutal dictator Kim Jong-un in February. On Friday, a foreign ministry spokesman called Trump’s position “arbitrary and dishonest” and vowed North Korea will not move “even an inch” towards denuclearization under pressure.
Trump met with Kim for a day in Hanoi, Vietnam, that month to discuss a deal to denuclearize North Korea. He walked away halfway through, stating that the North Korean negotiation team was not willing to agree to a plan that actually ended their illegal nuclear program. The U.S. government has since seized a North Korean ship believed to have been trafficking in coal against international sanctions, further infuriating Pyongyang.
“As we have stated before, the underlying cause of setback of the DPRK [North Korea]-U.S. summit talks in Hanoi is the arbitrary and dishonest position taken by the United States, insisting on a method which is totally impossible to get through,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman told the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “We took crucial and meaningful measures of a strategically decisive nature including the discontinuation of nuclear test and test-fire of intercontinental ballistic missile … However, the United States did not respond to our goodwill measures.”
The spokesman accused Trump of ending talks with Kim to push for the “completely irrelevant issue” of denuclearizing North Korea’s regime, at talks scheduled to discuss denuclearization of the Korean regime.
“We hereby make it clear once again that the United States would not be able to move us even an inch with the device it is now weighing in its mind, and the further its mistrust and hostile acts towards the DPRK grow, the fiercer our reaction will be,” the spokesman concluded. “Unless the United States puts aside the current method of calculation and comes forward with a new method of calculation, the DPRK-U.S. dialogue will never be resumed and by extension, the prospect for resolving the nuclear issue will be much gloomy [sic].”
KCNA also reported Friday that the Foreign Affairs Ministry sent a letter to Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, “as regards the incident of dispossession of a DPRK cargo ship by the U.S.” The regime propaganda outlet did not specify what was in the letter, though given Pyongyang’s objection to the seizure of the ship, it likely made a demand to have the U.N. pressure America to return it.
The Justice Department announced last week that authorities had seized the Wise Honest, one of North Korea’s largest ships, for illegally selling coal, a sanctioned product. American officials described the ship as “a critical source of revenue for DPRK-based companies and for the North Korean government” in documents about the seizure.
“The United States should deliberate and think over the consequences its outrageous act might have on the future developments. Also, the United States must return our cargo ship without delay. We regard it as part of our territory where our sovereignty is fully exercised,” North Korean U.N. Ambassador Kim Song said on Wednesday.
It is unclear what the U.N. would do to benefit North Korea on this issue, as the ship was seized for violating U.N. sanctions.
In addition to violating sanctions, Pyongyang responded to the failed Trump summit by restarting its weapons development program. Last month, KCNA reported that the North Korean military tested a “tactical guided weapon” of unknown origin at Kim Jong-un’s behest. “The development of the weapon system serves as an event of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army,” it stated.
As KCNA did not reveal the nature of the weapon, it is not possible for international observers to determine if the weapons test violated sanctions. KCNA did not state that the weapon had nuclear capabilities.
Kim has also moved to expand relations with America’s enemies in light of the failed meeting. A senior North Korean envoy is currently in Havana, Cuba, meeting with Castro regime officials on “topics of mutual interest,” according to the Cuban Foreign Ministry. A month ago, Kim met in person for the first time with Russian President Vladimir Putin, protesting at a summit in eastern Vladivostok, Russia, that Trump acted “in bad faith” by walking out of the talks.