North Korea’s leader plans to further develop nuclear programmes and to introduce a “new strategic weapon” in the near future, state media said on Wednesday, although he signalled there was still room for dialogue with the United States.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said his country no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, its official media reported on Wednesday, the strongest indication yet that the country could soon resume such tests, The New York Times reports.
The North had set a Dec. 31 deadline for the United States to make at least some concessions, complaining that its 18 months of diplomacy with Mr. Trump had yielded limited results. And for weeks, American officials feared Mr. Kim might test an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, to make his point.
During the party meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Kim said his country “will shift to a shocking actual action” that will make the United States “pay for the pains sustained by our people,” the North Korean news agency said.
In response, Trump said he had a good relationship with Kim and believed the North Korean leader would keep his word to refrain from nuclear and long-range missile tests.
“He did sign a contract, he did sign an agreement talking about denuclearisation. … That was done in Singapore, and I think he’s a man of his word, so we’re going to find out,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said he hoped North Korea would choose peace over war. “So, seeing that reporting publicly, it remains the case that we hope that chairman Kim will take a different course,” Pompeo told Fox News in an interview. “We’re hopeful that … chairman Kim will make the right decision – he’ll choose peace and prosperity over conflict and war.”
