North Korea slams S Korea over N-talks

Bloomberg

North Korea lashed out at South Korea for lacking a fresh solution to revive nuclear talks, and said the country will continue to strengthen its force to deal with what it called US threats.
“If they want to deal with us, they will have to approach us after racking their brains and finding a different method,” foreign ministry official Kwon Jong Gun said in a statement released via the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “We will continue to build up our force in order to overpower the persistent threats from the US, and such efforts of ours are in fact continuing at this point of time.”
Earlier on Saturday, a separate North Korean official said via KCNA that his country has lost confidence in South Korea and “really does not” want to sit down for talks.
The US and North Korea have remained far apart on ways to achieve denuclearisation. As tensions between the two sides rise, South Korea has offered help to restore dialogue while pledging to improve its own relations with North Korea.
North Korea says its nuclear arms serve as a deterrent against the US and that Washington must ease its sanctions before denuclearisation can take place. The US demands North Korea abandon its arms ambitions before restrictions can ease.
Marking the second anniversary of the 2018 meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump, North Korean foreign minister Ri Son Gwon said earlier that the US had broken its word and dashed hopes for denuclearisation.
“Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise,”
Ri was quoted as saying in a KCNA report, adding the US has shown it’s aiming for the “isolation and suffocation” of North Korea.
North Korea last week cut off communication links set up two years ago with South Korea, which it accused of allowing hostile acts by failing to prevent activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border by using balloons.