North Korean leader Kim Jong One said he was open to talks with the United States, but only if Washington gave his request that Pyongyang abandoned his nuclear weapons program.
Kim made these remarks during a recent session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, Central Korean Central television (KCTV) reported on Monday. He said he had “good memories” of President Trump from their previous heights and would plan to speak if the United States changed his position.
The declaration marked Kim’s first public response to Trump’s recent openings and underlined the Gulf between the two parties. Leaving the American objective of North Korean denuclearization would represent a major change in American policy and a major concession in Pyongyang.
Trump continued to praise his personal relations with Kim, but the White House told Reuters in July that the ultimate objective of American policy remains the complete denuclearization of North Korea.
The two leaders surprised the world of an impromptu meeting in the demilitarized zone in 2019, when Trump briefly crossed the border to North Korea to shake the hand of Kim – a symbolic moment which highlighted their unconventional diplomacy.
Kim also pointed out that he did not intend to resume dialogue with South Korea, a key American ally who helped organize the previous Trump-Kim summits during Trump’s first mandate. Tensions on the peninsula have deepened while Kim accelerates the development of weapons and strengthens links with Russia in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
In a separate interview with the BBC, the South Korean president Lee Jae Myung said that he would support an agreement in which North Korea freezes the production of its nuclear weapons rather than demotting them, if such an agreement could be concluded between Trump and Kim.