North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that if the United States stops insisting that his country abandon nuclear weapons, Pyongyang is ready for negotiations. This was reported by UNN with reference to Reuters.
Details
"Personally, I still have warm memories of US President (Donald) Trump," KCNA reported, quoting the North Korean leader's speech at the Supreme People's Assembly on Sunday.
The two leaders met three times during Trump's first presidency.
Kim's comments came as the new liberal government in Seoul urged Trump to take the lead in resuming dialogue with Kim, six years after all peace talks with Pyongyang failed over sanctions and nuclear disarmament.
If the United States abandons its absurd obsession with the denuclearization of our country and accepts reality, striving for true peaceful coexistence, we have no reason not to sit down at the negotiating table with the United States.
This is the first time Kim has mentioned Trump's name since the US president's inauguration in January, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a North Korea expert at the US Stimson Center.
This is an overture. This is Kim's invitation to Trump to reconsider US denuclearization policy, implying that if the US abandons denuclearization, he can meet Trump face-to-face.
Kim's warm words for Trump contrasted with his sharp assertion that he would never give up nuclear weapons or engage in dialogue with South Korea, which he called his main enemy.
For North Korea, the creation of nuclear weapons to allegedly protect its security from "serious threats" from the United States and South Korea was a matter of survival, Kim cynically stated, listing a series of regular allied military exercises that, he said, escalated into nuclear war exercises.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said in an interview with Reuters that North Korea produces 15 to 20 nuclear bombs a year, and any agreement that freezes this production would be a useful step toward the eventual dismantling of the program.
"Based on this, we can move to medium-term negotiations on nuclear arms reduction, and in the long term, once mutual trust is restored and North Korea's concerns about regime security are reduced, we can continue denuclearization," he said.
Kim strongly rejected any phased plan, saying that recent proposals from Washington and Seoul for dialogue were insincere, as their fundamental intention to weaken the North and destroy its regime remained unchanged, and that Lee's phased plan was proof of this.
"The world already knows very well what the United States does after forcing a country to give up its nuclear weapons and disarm. We will never give up our nuclear weapons," Kim said.
North Korea has been under UN sanctions and an arms embargo since its first nuclear test in 2006. But while sanctions have limited funding for military development, Pyongyang continues to make progress in developing nuclear weapons and powerful ballistic missiles.
Addition
In August, media reported that Donald Trump expressed a desire to meet with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in 2025.
Relations between DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump remain at a "decent" level, which may indicate Pyongyang's readiness for negotiations with the new US administration. However, North Korea promises to react to attempts to stop its nuclear program.