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Bloomberg
Six weeks after US President Donald Trump took his historic first steps into North Korea, talks with Kim Jong-un appear to be back on the verge of collapse.
North Korea’s foreign ministry renewed its threat to take “new road†in negotiations with the US, saying Washington and Seoul would “pay a heavy price†if they continued to disregard the regime’s warnings against holding joint military exercises. The statement came less than an hour after North Korea fired a new volley of short-range ballistic missiles into the sea — its fourth such weapons test in two weeks.
While Trump has said the tests don’t violate his agreements with Kim, they do constitute of breach of UN resolutions and threaten American troops stationed on the peninsula. Kim has given the US until the end of the year to make a better offer in nuclear negotiations, and the foreign ministry statement said the allies’ actions were making dialogue more difficult.
Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst with NK Pro, said the statement “seems to lay the groundwork for backing out†of Kim’s pledge to halt testing of nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles that can carry them to the US mainland. “I am still skeptical that North Korea will start ICBMs and nuclear tests this year, but I don’t think it’s completely off the books,†she said.