North Korea’s Kim says past diplomacy only confirmed US’ hostility

SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Pyongyang’s past diplomacy with Washington only confirmed its “unchanging” hostility towards his country, state media said on Nov 22, months ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

While in office, former US president Trump met Mr Kim three times, but Washington failed to make much progress on efforts to denuclearise North Korea.

Since

Mr Kim’s second summit with Trump collapsed in Hanoi

in 2019, the North has abandoned diplomacy, doubling down on weapons development and rejecting US offers of talks.

Speaking on Nov 21 at a defence exhibition showcasing some of North Korea’s most powerful weapons systems, Mr Kim did not mention Trump by name, but the most recent high-level talks with the US were under his administration.

“We have already gone as far as we can go with the United States as negotiators, and what we became certain of is not the willingness of a great power to coexist,” Mr Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Instead, Pyongyang learnt of Washington’s “thorough stance of power and an unchanging, invasive, and hostile policy towards North Korea”, Mr Kim added.

Images released by KCNA of the exhibition showed what appeared to be its intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, multiple rocket launchers and drones on display.

The event featured Pyongyang’s “latest products of the national defence scientific and technological group of the DPRK with the strategic and tactical weapons, which have been updated and developed once again”, KCNA said, referring to the country by its official acronym.

Never before has the Korean peninsula faced a situation “that could lead to the most destructive nuclear war”, Mr Kim also said in his speech.

In recent months, North Korea has built closer military ties with Moscow, and the US and South Korea say Pyongyang has sent thousands of soldiers to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.

Leaders “in love”

A few months after

Mr Kim and Trump’s first landmark summit in Singapore

in June 2018, the then US President famously told a rally that he and the authoritarian leader had fallen “in love”.

A book in 2020 revealed that Mr Kim deployed flattery and florid prose, and addressed Trump as “Your Excellency”, in the letters that forged his diplomatic courtship of the former president.

But their second summit in 2019 fell apart over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.

In July 2024, Trump said of Mr Kim: “I think he misses me”, and that it was “nice to get along with somebody that has a lot of nuclear weapons”.

In a commentary released that month, North Korea said that while it was true Trump tried to reflect the “special personal relations” between the heads of states, he “did not bring about any substantial positive change”.

“Even if any administration takes office in the US, the political climate, which is confused by the infighting of the two parties, does not change and, accordingly, we do not care about this,” it added. AFP