Kim Jong Un slams US-South Korea-Japan partnership

SEOUL (AP):

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said an elevated US security partnership with South Korea and Japan poses a grave threat to his country and vowed to further bolster his nuclear weapons programme, state media reported on Sunday.

Kim has previously made similar warnings, but his latest statement implies again that the North Korean leader won’t likely embrace President Donald Trump’s overture to meet him and revive diplomacy any time soon.

In a speech marking the 77th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army on Saturday, Kim said the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral security partnership, established under a US plot to form a NATO-like regional military bloc, is inviting military imbalance on the Korean Peninsula and “raising a grave challenge to the security environment of our state”, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“Referring to a series of new plans for rapidly bolstering all deterrence including nuclear forces, he clarified once again the unshakable policy of more highly developing the nuclear forces,” KCNA said.

Amid stalled diplomacy with the US and South Korea in recent years, Kim has focused on enlarging and modernising his arsenal of nuclear weapons. In response, the United States and South Korea have expanded their bilateral military exercises and trilateral training involving Japan. North Korea has lashed out at those drills, calling them rehearsals to invade the country.

REACH OUT TO KIM

Since his January 20 inauguration, Trump has said he would reach out to Kim again as he boasted of his high-stakes summit with him during his first term.

During a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, Trump said, “We will have relations with North Korea, with Kim Jong Un. I got along with him very well, as you know. I think I stopped the war.”

During a Fox News interview broadcast on January 23, Trump called Kim “a smart guy” and “not a religious zealot”. Asked whether he will reach out to Kim again, Trump replied, “I will, yeah.”

Trump met Kim three times in 2018-19 to discuss how to end North Korea’s nuclear programme in what was the first-ever summit between the leaders of the US and North Korea. The high-stakes diplomacy eventually collapsed because Trump rejected Kim’s offer to dismantle his main nuclear complex, a partial denuclearisation step, in return for broad sanctions relief.

North Korea hasn’t directly responded to Trump’s recent overture, as it continues weapons-testing activities and hostile rhetoric against the US. Many experts say Kim is now preoccupied with his dispatch of troops to Russia to support its war efforts against Ukraine. They say Kim would still eventually consider returning to diplomacy with Trump if he determines he would fail to maintain the current solid cooperation with Russia after the war ends.

In his Saturday speech, Kim reaffirmed that North Korea “will invariably support and encourage the just cause of the Russian army and people to defend their sovereignty, security and territorial integrity”. Kim accused the US of being behind “the war machine which is stirring up the tragic situation of Ukraine.”