Kim Jong Un Teases Another Summit With Trump, But Rules Out Giving Up His Nukes

SEOUL – President Trump may be able to see North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, again. Mr. Kim raised that distinct possibility at the closing session of the ninth party congress in Pyongyang in a lengthy statement declaring, “Whether it is peaceful coexistence or eternal confrontation, we are prepared for everything,”Mr. Kim, who rules as general secretary of the Workers’ Party, left no doubt, however, that Mr. Trump would have to recognize North Korea as a nuclear power that’s not going to give up its nuclear weapons. There will be no acceding to “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization,” as Washington began demanding long before Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-Il, ordered the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, he said.“That choice is not made by us,” said the statement, as issued in English translation by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency. “Relations depend entirely on the attitude of the U.S. side.”“We will fully prepare ourselves for the confrontation with the U.S. in the future,” said the statement.That said, however, the statement made clear that Mr. Kim is open to another meeting with Mr. Trump, who saw him three times during his first term — at Singapore in June 2018, then at Hanoi in February 2019 and four months later at Panmunjom on the North-South Korean line.The statement, issued in the name of the Workers’ Party, did not mention Mr. Trump by name or allude to previous summits. Nor did it hint where or when the two might meet, but Mr. Trump will be in Beijing in early April seeing China’s president, Xi Jinping, who might well encourage him to stop off in Pyongyang on the way home. “Whether it’s someone in Cuba or potentially one day someone in North Korea or right now in Iran, we are always open to listen,“ America’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in St. Kitts and Nevis meeting leaders of Caribbean nations, said at a press conference Mr. Kim framed his remarks as a challenge to Mr. Trump. “If the U.S. respects the present position of our state,” said the statement. “There is no reason why we cannot get on well with the U.S.” It went on, “If the U.S. is not away from the customary practices towards the DPRK and opts for confrontation to the end, the DPRK will be constant in its proportional response.”The words were not nearly as bombastic as the propaganda that Pyongyang has been putting out for years, hinting at nuclear strikes on America as well as South Korea and Japan, American allies that provide bases for heavy bombers and ships capable of carrying nuclear warheads.Without making the usual dire threats, the party statement made clear, “The course of bolstering up the nuclear force of the DPRK would continue as long as nuclear weapons exist on the earth.” North Korea, it said, has drawn “a red line disallowing anyone to bargain over the nuclear weapons of the DPRK.”Mr. Kim was not at all generous toward South Korea, whose left-leaning president, Lee Jae-myung, is eager to see him. “The DPRK has nothing to discuss with the ROK, the most hostile entity,” he said, “We will perpetuate the present situation, in which the conditions of contact with the ROK have been eliminated. And we will not revive the misguided past.”

Kim Jong Un Teases Another Summit With Trump, But Rules Out Giving Up His Nukes

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