Kim warns N Korea could consider change of tack

SEOUL: Nuclear-armed North Korea wants good relations with the US but could consider a change of approach if Washington maintains its sanctions, leader Kim Jong Un warned in his New Year speech Tuesday after 12 months of diplomatic rapprochement. At a summit with US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June the two signed a vaguely worded pledge on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But progress has since stalled with Pyongyang and Washington arguing over what that means.

"If the US fails to carry out its promise to the world... and remains unchanged in its sanctions and pressure upon the DPRK," Kim said Tuesday, "we might be compelled to explore a new path for defending the sovereignty of our country and supreme interests of our state". He was willing to meet Trump again at any time, he added, "to produce results welcomed by the international community". The North is demanding sanctions relief -- it is subject to multiple measures over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes -- and has condemned US insistence on its nuclear disarmament as "gangster-like". Washington is pushing to maintain the measures against the North until its "final, fully verified denuclearisation".

Kim’s speech "expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in negotiations so far", said former South Korean vice unification minister Kim Hyung-seok. The North Korean leader "obviously had certain expectations that the US would take certain steps -- however rudimentary they are -- after the North blew up a nuclear test site and took other steps. But none of them materialised. "He is faced with this urgent task to improve his ‘socialist economy’ -- which is impossible to achieve without lifting of the sanctions."

In marked contrast with January 1, 2018, when he ordered mass production of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, Kim said the North had "declared that we would no longer produce, test, use or spread our nuclear arsenal", calling for the US to take "corresponding measures". The production pledge was a "significant evolution in leadership intent, if true", Ankit Panda of the Federation of American Scientists said on Twitter, but credibility was an issue. "All this might offer is a temporary cap on warhead production as long as talks are on with the US -- to be withdrawn when sanctions relief doesn’t arrive," he added.