TOKYO — Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, said Tuesday that he was willing to meet President Trump for another summit at any time, but made clear that if international sanctions against his country continued, the North would “have no choice” but to pursue a different path from the diplomatic gestures that have characterized the past 12 months.
“I am willing to meet the United States president at any time for the betterment of our international community,” Mr. Kim said in his New Year’s Day speech, broadcast on North Korea’s state-run television. “However, if the United States does not keep its promise in our international community and misinterprets our patience and intention and continues with the sanctions, then we have no choice for the sake of our national interest and peace of the Korean Peninsula to come up with new initiatives and new measures.”
Wearing a suit and tie and sitting in an overstuffed leather armchair in a book-lined room, Mr. Kim offered largely a motivational speech about the need to strengthen the North Korean economy. But he took the opportunity to reiterate a demand that South Korea cease all military drills with “other foreign sources.”
“Those should be completely stopped,” Mr. Kim said. “That is our stance.”
There were sparse direct references in the speech to denuclearization. But Mr. Kim said the country would not be willing to take further steps toward removing its nuclear weapons unless the United States reciprocated.
“The statements and agreements after the summit with the United States were that we are going toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and that is my resolute commitment,” he said. “We will not make nuclear weapons and we will not proliferate nuclear weapons, and I have said this, and I will say this again now.
“If the United States can show corresponding measures, the relationship between the two countries will, through many processes, accelerate for the better. But if the counterpart continues with its past habits, it won’t be good, but I hope they stop this.”
Mr. Kim also indicated that the North wanted a peace declaration formally ending the Korean War.
His remarks followed a recent escalation of rhetoric from the North suggesting that he was losing patience with the diplomatic stalemate and the sanctions that have remained in place since he met with President Trump in Singapore last June.
This month, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry warned that the United States’ continued hard-line sanctions policy might “block” any chance of denuclearizing the country. A few days later, the North said through its official news agency that it would not dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the United States also agreed to shrink its military presence on and near the Korean Peninsula.
Mr. Trump has indicated that he wants to meet Mr. Kim for a second summit early in the year.
In his New Year’s speech, Mr. Kim praised the progress toward further cooperation that the two Koreas had made over the previous year. “North and South Koreans have resolved our tensions in the skies, waters and land,” he said.
He also suggested that South Koreans who once worked at the Kaesong industrial complex, which was run jointly between North and South Korea and shuttered in 2016, should be allowed to return. The North, he suggested, would accommodate them unconditionally.
“We should all be proud that we are moving together, North and South, as Koreans,” he said. “We should expand our inter-Korean cooperation so that we can actually see changes.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Kim sent a rare personal letter to the South Korean leader, Moon Jae-in, saying he hoped to visit Seoul in the new year. Analysts expect he may also try to meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Kim’s 2018 New Year’s speech ushered in hopes for a breakthrough in the geopolitical standoff that had kept the region on edge for months, as he offered to send a delegation to the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. Those hopes were realized at the opening ceremony when athletes from the two Koreas marched into the stadium together in a remarkable show of unity.
Source : Nytimes
