North Korea says not considering contact with US that would waste time

North Korea is not considering any contact with the United States that would only waste time, Foreign Minister Ri Son-gwon said on Wednesday, June 23.

“We are not considering even the possibility of any contact with the US, let alone having it, which would get us nowhere, only taking up precious time,” Ri said in a statement carried on state media KCNA.

He made his remarks after the new US envoy for North Korea said in Seoul on Monday, June 21, that he looked forward to a “positive response soon” on dialogue from Pyongyang.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has been an intractable problem for Washington for years and in trying to change that, President Joe Biden’s new administration conducted a review of policy and said it would seek “calibrated and practical” ways to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearize.

On Tuesday, June 22, the sister of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said in a statement that the United States appeared to be interpreting signals from North Korea in the “wrong way.”

Kim Yo-jong, a senior official in North Korea’s ruling party, was responding to US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who on Sunday, June 20, said he saw as an “interesting signal” a recent speech by Kim Jong-un on preparing for both confrontation and diplomacy with the United States.

Analyzing the responses, 38 North, a Washington-based North Korean monitoring project, said Pyongyang was making clear it had no plans for immediate engagement, “especially not without something more concrete from Washington than repetition of vague policy formulations.”

However, it said the statements were carefully composed not to say “no” to the idea of dialogue in general, but rather as a response to the Biden administration’s “lukewarm” reaction to Kim Jong-un.

According to 38 North, the foreign minister was rejecting “meaningless” contact, “but by implication, more substantive talks are still possible.”

It said it was also possible North Korea was throwing up objections to buy time until it is ready, given that its COVID-19 restrictions were still in place and face-to-face diplomatic contact was not possible. – Rappler.com