North Korea has declined to accept a list of South Korean journalists hoping to observe the closure of its nuclear test site, South Korea said yesterday, raising new questions about the North’s commitment to reducing tension.
North Korea had invited a limited number of journalists from South Korea and other countries to witness what it said would be the closing of its only nuclear weapons test site at Punggye-ri next week.
The North Korean offer to scrap the test site has been seen as major concession in months of easing tension between it on the one hand and South Korea and the United States on the other.
Photo: AP
However, the remarkable progress appeared to have been checked over the past few days, with Pyongyang raising doubts about an unprecedented June 12 summit in Singapore between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, and calling off talks with the South.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification, which handles dealings with the North, yesterday said that North Korea had “declined to accept” the list of journalists submitted by the South for the test site dismantling.
The ministry did not elaborate, but the North Korean decision is likely to raise doubts about its plan for the test site.
Trump on Thursday sought to placate North Korea after it threatened to call off the June summit, saying that Kim’s security would be guaranteed in any deal and his country would not suffer the fate of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, unless that could not be reached.
North Korea on Wednesday said it might not attend the Singapore summit if the US continued to demand it unilaterally abandon its nuclear arsenal, which it has developed in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions to counter perceived US hostility.
On Thursday, North Korea’s chief negotiator called South Korea “ignorant and incompetent,” and denounced US-South Korean air combat drills and threatened to halt all talks with the South.
Trump, in rambling remarks in the White House’s Oval Office, said that as far as he knew, the summit was still on track, but that Kim was possibly being influenced by Beijing.
However, he added that North Korea would have to abandon its nuclear weapons and warned that if no deal was reached, North Korea could be “decimated” like Libya or Iraq.
China, responding to Trump’s suggestion that Beijing might be influencing North Korea’s new hardline stance, yesterday said it stands for stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula and for the settlement of confrontation over Pyongyang’s development of weapons through talks.
Asked about Trump’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) said China’s position had not changed and he reiterated that it supported the goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“We are consistently supporting all relevant parties in resolving the peninsula issue through political consultations and peaceful means,” Lu told a regular briefing.
Kim has made two visits to China for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), including a secretive train trip to Beijing in late March, his first known visit outside North Korea since rising to power.
He flew to the port city of Dalian earlier this month.
Both times, Kim’s encounters with Xi were cast by Chinese state media as friendly.
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