Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pledged to irreversibly cement his country’s status as a nuclear power while maintaining a hard-line stance toward South Korea, which he called the “most hostile” state, state media said Tuesday.
In a speech Monday to Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament, Kim accused the United States of global “state terrorism and aggression,” in an apparent reference to the war in the Middle East, and said the North will play a more forceful role in a united front against Washington amid rising anti-American sentiment.
But Kim didn’t call out US President Donald Trump by name and said whether his adversaries “choose confrontation or peaceful coexistence is up to them, and we are prepared to respond to any choice.”
His comments largely aligned with his statements at last month’s ruling Workers’ Party Congress, where he vilified Seoul but left open the door for dialogue with the Trump administration, urging Washington to drop its demands for the North’s nuclear disarmament as a precondition
for talks.