NEW YORK: A senior North Korean diplomat reiterated at the UN Monday that his country won&#39;t give up its nuclear weapons despite numerous demands to do so, calling them crucial to keeping a &ldquo;balance of power&rdquo; with South Korea. &ldquo;We will never walk away from this position,&rdquo; he said. Under the spotlight of the General Assembly&#39;s annual meeting of world leaders, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong amplified his country&#39;s longstanding complaints about US-led military exercises with South Korea and Japan. Complaining that the US and its allies are mounting a &ldquo;growing threat of aggression,&rdquo; he portrayed his own country&#39;s arsenal as the reason &ldquo;the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula is ensured.&rdquo; Still, his address was more tempered, especially toward the United States, than many of his country&rsquo;s prior remarks on the world stage and elsewhere. While Kim lambasted &mdash; without naming names &mdash; &ldquo;hegemonic forces&rdquo; and an &ldquo;indiscriminate tariff war,&rdquo; there were no personal insults, and there was more sternness than over-the-top bellicosity. Kim vowed that &ldquo;we will never give up nuclear,&rdquo; noting that North Korea&rsquo;s nuclear program is enshrined in its constitution. He asserted that security on the Korean Peninsula &ldquo;is faced with serious challenges more than ever,&rdquo; saying that the US-Japanese-South Korean exercises &ldquo;are breaking all the previous records in terms of scale, nature, frequency and scope.&rdquo; The North routinely characterizes such war games as preludes to an attack. South Korea says military exercises are necessarySouth Korea, for its part, has said the recent trilateral military exercises were necessary to counter North Korea&rsquo;s growing nuclear and missile threats. Numerous UN Security Council resolutions have demanded that the North stop building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Kim&rsquo;s appearance at the United Nations marked the first time since 2018 that North Korea sent a senior diplomat to the General Assembly gathering. The UN, he said, &ldquo;should not feel relieved, nor congratulate ourselves, on the non-occurrence of World War III for the past 80 years. Instead, we should pay due attention to the fact that the inducible threat has persisted and is now becoming more serious, and take measures accordingly. The diplomat&#39;s appearance at the UN comes amid signs of renewed interest in a possible meeting between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and US President Donald Trump. Trump and the North Korean leader met three times in 2018-2019 as Pyongyang was building a nuclear weapons stockpile, which Kim Jong Un views as key to his country&rsquo;s security and his continued authority in the northeast Asian nation. The talks collapsed over US-led sanctions against the North, and its leader has since shunned any diplomacy with the US and South Korea. Since Trump returned to power in January, he has repeatedly expressed hope of restarting talks with Kim. Last Monday, the North Korean leader said he still has &ldquo;good memories&rdquo; of Trump but urged the United States to drop its demand that the North surrender its nuclear arms as a precondition for resuming diplomacy. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said in an Associated Press interview on Friday that President Lee Jae Myung has asked Trump to become &ldquo;a peacemaker&rdquo; and use his leadership to get North Korea to talks to reduce military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Cho said Trump &ldquo;expressed his willingness to be engaged with North Korea again.&rdquo; Trump has an Asia visit upcomingTrump is expected to visit South Korea next month to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Trump is also scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during that meeting. North Korea has always had close ties to neighboring China, but in recent years has focused on expanding cooperation with Russia, another neighbor, by supplying combat troops and ammunition to support its war against Ukraine. The leaders of North Korea and China recently held their first summit in over six years, pledging mutual support and enhanced cooperation. The meeting followed a first-ever joint appearance by the DPRK&rsquo;s Kim, China&rsquo;s President Xi Jinping, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at a massive Beijing military parade marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. At a follow-up meeting in Beijing on Sunday, the foreign ministers of North Korea and China agreed to deepen their bilateral ties and resist &ldquo;hegemonism,&rdquo; an apparent reference to their pushback against the United States.

Asia

North Korean diplomat insists his country won't give up nukes at the UN

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he still has good memories of U.S. President Donald Trump and urged Washington to drop its demand the North surrender its nukes as a precondition for resuming long-stalled diplomacy. Speaking to Pyongyang&rsquo;s rubber-stamp parliament on Sunday, Kim stressed that he has no intention of ever resuming dialogue with rival South Korea, a key U.S. ally that helped broker Kim&rsquo;s previous summits with Trump during the American president&rsquo;s first term, according to a speech published by state media on Monday. Kim suspended virtually all cooperation with the South following the collapse of his second summit with Trump in 2019 over disagreements about U.S.-led sanctions against the North. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have worsened in recent years as Kim has accelerated his weapons buildup and aligned with Russia over the war in Ukraine. Kim&rsquo;s comments came as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung prepares to depart for New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, where he is expected to address nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula and call on North Korea to return to talks. Trump is also expected to visit South Korea next month to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, prompting media speculation that he may try to meet Kim at the inter-Korean border, as they did during their third meeting in 2019, which ultimately failed to salvage their nuclear diplomacy. During his latest speech at the Supreme People&rsquo;s Assembly, Kim reiterated that he would never give up his nuclear weapons program, which experts say he sees as his strongest guarantee of survival and the extension of his family&rsquo;s dynastic rule. &ldquo;The world already knows well what the United States does after forcing other countries to give up their nuclear weapons and disarm,&rdquo; Kim said. &ldquo;We will never lay down our nuclear weapons &hellip; There will be no negotiations, now or never, about trading anything with hostile countries in exchange for lifting sanctions.&rdquo; He said he still holds &ldquo;good personal memories&rdquo; of Trump from their first meetings and that there is &ldquo;no reason not to&rdquo; resume talks with the United States if Washington &ldquo;abandons its delusional obsession with denuclearization.&rdquo; Kim has stepped up testing activities in recent years, demonstrating weapons of various ranges designed to strike U.S. allies in Asia and the U.S. mainland. Analysts say Kim&rsquo;s nuclear push is aimed at eventually pressuring Washington to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength. Kim is also trying to bolster his leverage by strengthening cooperation with traditional allies Russia and China, in an emerging partnership aimed at undercutting U.S. influence. He has sent thousands of troops and huge supplies of military equipment to Russia to help support President Vladimir Putin&rsquo;s war in Ukraine. He visited Beijing earlier this month, sharing the spotlight with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin at a massive military parade. Experts say Kim&rsquo;s rare foreign trip was likely intended to boost his leverage ahead of a potential resumption of talks with the United States. There&rsquo;s growing concern in Seoul that it could lose its voice in future efforts to defuse the nuclear standoff on the peninsula, as the North seeks to negotiate directly with the United States. Such fears were amplified last year when Kim declared that he was abandoning North Korea&rsquo;s long-standing goal of peaceful unification with South Korea and ordered a rewriting of the North&rsquo;s constitution to cement the South as a permanent enemy.

Americas

Kim Jong Un recalls “good memories” of Trump, rejects denuclearization demands, vows to keep nukes, and deepens ties with Russia, China.

Articles tagged with "Nuclear Weapons"

North Korean diplomat insists his country won't give up nukes at the UN

North Korean leader recalls 'good memories' of Trump, urges US to drop denuclearization demands