N.Korea warns U.S. misinterpreting signals risks disappointment
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[June 22, 2021]
By Josh Smith
SEOUL (Reuters) - A top North Korean
official warned the United States on Tuesday not to misinterpret
comments by her leader, saying doing so would end in disappointment, as
a U.S. envoy aiming to get talks with the North back on track met South
Korea's president.
Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in North Korea's ruling party and sister
of leader Kim Jong Un, released a statement in state media saying the
United States appeared to be interpreting signals from North Korea in
the "wrong way".
She was responding to U.S. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, who
on Sunday said he saw as an "interesting signal" in a recent speech by
Kim Jong Un on preparing for both confrontation and diplomacy with the
United States.
"It seems that the U.S. may interpret the situation in such a way as to
seek a comfort for itself," she said in the statement, carried by the
North's KCNA state news agency.
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"The expectation, which they chose to harbour the wrong way, would
plunge them into a greater disappointment."
North Korea's nuclear weapons programme has been a seemingly intractable
problem for the United States for years.
President Joe Biden's administration has conducted a review of North
Korea policy that concluded the United States would seek to find
"calibrated and practical" ways of inducing it to give up its nuclear
weapons.
Kim's warning to the United States came as the recently appointed U.S.
special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, was visiting South
Korea to meet senior officials, including President Moon Jae-in.
Moon told the U.S. envoy he would do his best to get inter-Korean and
U.S.-North Korea relations back on track during the remainder of his
term in office and expressed hopes for progress toward denuclearisation
and peace on the Korean peninsula, presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee
said.
Sung Kim reaffirmed Biden's support for meaningful inter-Korean dialogue
and engagement and said he would "do his best for resumption of
U.S.-North Korea talks", Park said.
On Monday, Sung Kim said he was willing to meet the North Koreans
"anywhere, anytime without preconditions" and that he looks forward to a
"positive response soon".
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A senior North Korean official ridiculed American hopes for talks on
Tuesday, as the United States and South Korea agreed to consider
scrapping a controversial working group established to coordinate
their policy toward Pyongyang. Gloria Tso reports.
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'CLEVER MOVE'
In a sign being seen in South Korea as a positive U.S. gesture, the
two allies also discussed scrapping a joint "working group" that
analysts say South Korea has seen as an irritant in their relations.
Sung Kim, in talks with his South Korean counterpart, Noh Kyu-duk,
agreed to "look into terminating the working group", while
reinforcing coordination at other levels, the South Korean Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.
The working group was set up in 2018 to help the allies coordinate
approaches to North Korea on issues such as denuclearisation talks,
humanitarian aid, sanctions enforcement and inter-Korean relations
amid a flurry of diplomatic engagement with the North at that time.
The Moon administration has made building ties with the North a top
priority. In an indication of South Korea's doubts about the working
group's coordination, a former aide to Moon told parliament last
year it was increasingly seen as an obstacle to relations between
the two Koreas.
South Korea would see ending the working group as a goodwill gesture
from Biden, said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King's
College London.
"From a South Korean perspective, this was basically a mechanism for
the U.S. to block inter-Korean projects during the Trump years," he
said.
"It would be a clever political move for the Biden administration to
end the group since consultation between Washington and Seoul will
take place anyway."
(Reporting by Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin and
Sangmi Cha; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)
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