One and a half weeks before the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden, North Korea has described the United States as a „greatest enemy“ and threatened to develop its nuclear program. The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported today, citing the North Korean state agency KCNA, that North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un had urged Washington to end the hostile policy towards his country.
Kim: Nuclear development continues
The atomic development is continued for one’s own survival. The research design for a new nuclear submarine has been completed, said Kim at the congress of the ruling Labor Party in Pyongyang.
Kim said in his country’s first statement on the change of the US presidency that he did not assume that US policy towards his country would change, regardless of who was in power, it said. Negotiations between the USA and North Korea over its nuclear program have not made any progress since Kim’s failed summit with the elected US President Donald Trump in Vietnam in February 2019. In total, Kim Trump had met three times. Referring to the meetings, the report said Kim said hostile US policies had worsened despite North Korea’s „efforts“.
North Korea is largely isolated internationally due to its nuclear weapons program. The sanctions imposed on the program are hampering its economic development. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers‘ Party at the end of 2019, Kim said that Pyongyang was no longer bound by its moratorium on tests of atomic bombs and ICBMs. The USA and North Korea signed an armistice after the Korean War (1950–1953), but are still formally at war in the absence of a peace treaty.
