North Korea said Sunday that there had been no progress in U.S.-North Korea relations and that hostilities that could lead to an exchange of fire had continued, according to North Korea’s state news agency KCNA.
In a statement under the name of North Korea senior official Kim Yong Chol, KCNA said that it would be a mistake for the United States to rely on U.S. President Donald Trump’s and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “close personal relations” and ignore a year-end deadline that Kim set for denuclearization talks.
Kim Yong Chol was the nuclear talks envoy to the United States for the discussions between the two countries before the second summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Vietnam in February ended in failure.
Kim Yong Chol said the United States had been pressuring North Korea in a “more crafty and vicious way” instead of heeding North Korea’s call for Washington to adopt a new approach, adding that the United States had been persistently pushing other countries to impose U.N. sanctions on North Korea.
The statement came days after North Korea asked South Korea to discuss removal of its facilities from the North’s resort of Mount Kumgang, a key symbol of cooperation that Pyongyang recently criticized as “shabby” and “capitalist.”
North Korea on Friday sent notices to the South’s Unification Ministry, which handles issues between the two sides, and Hyundai Group, whose affiliate Hyundai Asan Corp. built the resort facilities, asking for their demolition and seeking discussion through the exchange of documents, the ministry said.
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