North Korea has lambasted as “nonsense” remarks by US National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has called on Pyongyang to show seriousness in giving up its nuclear weapons, warning that “nothing good” will come of such comments.
Bolton, in an interview with Bloomberg News published on Wednesday, said there was first the need for a “real indication from North Korea that they’ve made the strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons.”
On Saturday, North Korean vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said Bolton “showed above himself by saying such nonsense,” adding that his comments had “no charm in it and he looks dim-sighted to me.”
“Bolton’s remarks make me wonder whether they sprang out of incomprehension of the intentions of the top leaders of the DPRK and the US or whether he was just trying to talk with a certain sense of humor for his part, with its own deviation,” the North Korean official was further quoted by the official KCNA news agency as saying at a press conference.
Choe also cautioned that there would be no good if Washington continued “to throw away such remarks devoid of discretion and reason.”
Pyongyang claims to have tested a new kind of weapon.
Bolton is the second high-ranking US politician to be criticized by Pyongyang in recent days, after it branded Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “reckless” on Thursday, demanding his removal from stalled nuclear negotiations over the North's nuclear program.
Back in late February, US President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader reached an impasse at their face-to-face denuclearization talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, with Washington demanding full disarmament and Pyongyang demanding economic incentives through partial lifting harsh sanctions.
The second summit in fact did collapse when the American president abruptly walked away from the talks without reaching a deal or even issuing a final statement.
Trump claimed that he quit the talks because Kim demanded to lift all economic sanctions as a prerequisite to denuclearization.
However, Pyongyang quickly responded that it had never asked for the removal of all sanctions, but only the partial removal of them.
The US and the North have been at loggerheads since the collapse of the Hanoi summit.
The two leaders met at a historic summit for the first time in June last year in Singapore, where they agreed to work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Subsequent diplomacy between the two sides, however, made little progress, mainly because Washington refused to lift its crippling sanctions.
The US has refused to offer any sanctions relief in return for several unilateral steps already taken by North Korea. Pyongyang, on the other hand, has suspended its missile and nuclear testing, demolished at least one nuclear test site, and agreed to allow international inspectors into a missile engine test facility.
The US, however, has insisted that sanctions on the North must remain in place until it completely and irreversibly dismantles its nuclear program.
Earlier this month, Kim said that the US had raised the risk of returning to past tensions after the collapse of the Hanoi summit, stressing that yet another meeting between the two leaders was only possible if Washington came with the right attitude.
He also said that he would wait “until the end of this year” for Washington to decide.