North Korea says Kim-Trump ties are ‘not bad' — but it's not giving up its nukes
She said North Korea's nuclear capability has sharply increased since the first round of the Kim-Trump diplomacy and that any attempt to deny North Korea as a nuclear weapons state would be rejected.
'If the U.S. fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK- U.S. meeting will remain as a 'hope' of the U.S. side,' Kim Yo Jong said, referring to her country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
She said it would be 'advisable to seek another way of contact.'
Kim Yo Jong is a key official on the Central Committee of the North's ruling Workers' Party. She handles the country's relations with South Korea and the United States, and South Korean officials and experts believe she is the North's second-most powerful person after her brother.
Kim Yo Jong said she was responding to reported comments by a U.S. official that Trump is open to talks on denuclearization. She likely was referring to a Saturday article by Yonhap news agency that cited an unidentified White House official as saying Trump 'remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully denuclearized North Korea.'
'North Korea wants to say it's not interested in talks on denuclearization and the U.S. must determine what benefits it can give to the North first,' said Nam Sung-wook, a former head of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's spy agency.
Nam said Trump's likely desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize would prompt him to seek talks with Kim Jong Un and give him corresponding benefits for taking phased denuclearization steps. Nam said North Korea would want broad sanctions relief, a suspension of U.S.-South Korea military drills that it regards as invasion rehearsals and other economic incentives.
Kim Yeol Soo, an analyst at South Korea's Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said U.S. and North Korean officials could meet if they narrow some differences on terms for restoring talks. But he said Trump's unpredictability would make it extremely difficult to predict what concessions the Americans would offer.
Other experts have earlier said that North Korea — now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia — sees no urgent need to resume diplomacy with the U.S. and South Korea. On Monday, Kim Yo Jong rebuffed overtures by South Korea's new liberal government, saying its 'blind trust' in the country's alliance with the U.S. and hostility toward North Korea make it no different from its conservative predecessor.
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This may be because it is not a trade deal in the classical sense – at least in the sense of the laborious trade deals that the EU is used to striking, partly because a large facet of the 'deal' is based on a promise and also because the optics of the deal are quite depressing for Europe. At the headline level, EU exports into the US will be met with a 15% tariff to be paid by the US consumer, not unlike the Japanese 'deal'. Auto companies will not be displeased with a 15% tariff. Wines and spirits, steel and notably pharmaceuticals have yet to have tariff levels finalised and there will be some relief on the confirmation of 15% tariffs on pharmaceuticals, though the investigation into pharmaceutical exports back to the US is a tail risk. Interestingly, the EU has resisted attempts to water down its digital regulations. 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However, amongst the professional trade staff, there is still some despair at the humiliating optics of the deal, the fact that it is in many ways not binding, and the risk that there is no undertaking that it is final in the sense that another round of tariffs is imposed later. On the positive side for Europe, and flipping to the 'Mitty-esque' part of the deal, two of the key undertakings in the deal – that European companies invest USD 600 bn in the US, in addition to a commitment to purchase microchips, as well as a commitment from the EU to buy USD 750bn in energy from the US over the course of the Trump presidency – are not at all clear in their implementation, and very much open to a fudge, with the right accounting treatment. 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More importantly, in the context of a very oversold dollar, there is now an incentive for EU policy makers to try hard to talk down the euro, and we may see a short-term rebound in the currency pair. On the whole, if this is a 'final' deal and the topic of tariffs does not re-emerge in the next three years, it is not a bad deal for the semi's, autos and aerospace sectors in Europe, though the public optics are not good for the EU. The best parts of the deal for Europe are the fantastical claims of incoming European investment and energy purchases in the US. This is a Mitty style fairy tale that the Europeans hope Mr Trump believes in. The telling factor is that this deal has now emptied all goodwill from the trans-Atlantic relationship, and effectively completes another diplomatic rupture by President Trump. From a European point of view, this is yet another 'wake up call' and the best that can be hoped for is that it accelerates projects like the savings and investment union and 'strategic autonomy'. European leaders and the European policy elite keep talking about this, but until we see hard evidence (for example, German real GDP over the last five years is close to zero), they are the fantasists. Have a great week ahead Mike
