North Korea says ready for dialogue, confrontation with US
North Korea says it is ready for both dialogue and confrontation with the United States, warning the administration of President Donald Trump that continuing unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang will be a" miscalculation."
"If the US is still dreaming of achieving everything with sanctions, we must either let it dream on or shatter that dream," North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho was quoted as saying by the KCNA state media on Friday.
"We are prepared for both dialogue and confrontation," he asserted. "If the US tries to confront us with sanctions and not abandon its confrontational posture, it would be a miscalculation."
The remarks came after Stephen Biegun, Trump's special representative for North Korea, said after meeting with South Korean officials on Wednesday that they were “prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea.”
Denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongynag have yet to restart the abrupt ending of a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in February.
Trump and Kim met again in June at Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to reopen negotiations without announcing a clear timeline.
Ri on Friday accused US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of casting "dark shadows" over denuclearization talks, accusing him of focusing on his own political ambitions rather than the foreign policy of the Trump administration.
Pompeo angered North Korean officials earlier this week, when he warned during an interview that Pyongyang would be faced with the strongest US sanctions in history should it refuse to denuclearize.
Biegun, who leads working-level talks with North Korea, landed in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss resuming the talks.
South Korea's deputy national security adviser Kim Hyun-chong said after meeting with Biegun on Thursday that the talks could reopen soon.
The latest developments come after a brief period of tension over latest round of joint military exercises by the US and its ally South Korea this month.
North Korea has long denounced the joint exercises as a rehearsal for invasion of its territories. Washington stations nearly 30,000 troops in the South to purportedly defend it from its northern neighbor.
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