SEOUL, Sept 30 — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported Thursday, and accused the Joe Biden administration of continuing a hostile policy against his nuclear-armed country.
Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been largely at a standstill since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in return.
In recent months, the United States has repeatedly offered to meet North Korean representatives anywhere, at any time, without preconditions, while saying it will pursue denuclearisation.
But Kim condemned the declarations as “nothing more than a facade to mask their deception and hostile acts and an extension of hostile policy from past administrations”, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported.
Under the new administration, “the US military threat and hostile policy against us have not changed at all but have become more cunning”, he said in a lengthy address to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s one-party parliament.
Kim’s speech comes after the North this week tested what it said was a hypersonic gliding missile, and earlier this month announced it had successfully fired a long-range cruise missile.
The tests are the latest advances in its weapons development programmes, which have seen it subject to multiple rounds of international sanctions. — AFP
