North Korea Threatens To Scrap Meeting With US

by

A man watches a TV screen showing file footage of U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 16, 2018. North Korea's breaking off a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatening to scrap next month's historic summit with President Trump over allied military drills is seen as a move by Kim to gain leverage and establish that he's entering the crucial nuclear negotiations from a position of strength. Washington and Seoul, which have no intentions to overpay for whatever Kim brings to the table, say international sanctions forced Kim into talks after a flurry of weapons tests. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Reading Time: 2 minutes
A man watches a TV screen showing file footage of U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 16, 2018. North Korea's breaking off a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatening to scrap next month's historic summit with President Trump over allied military drills is seen as a move by Kim to gain leverage and establish that he's entering the crucial nuclear negotiations from a position of strength. Washington and Seoul, which have no intentions to overpay for whatever Kim brings to the table, say international sanctions forced Kim into talks after a flurry of weapons tests. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A man watches a TV screen showing file footage of U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 16, 2018. North Korea’s breaking off a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatening to scrap next month’s historic summit with President Trump over allied military drills is seen as a move by Kim to gain leverage and establish that he’s entering the crucial nuclear negotiations from a position of strength. Washington and Seoul, which have no intentions to overpay for whatever Kim brings to the table, say international sanctions forced Kim into talks after a flurry of weapons tests. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

North Korea on Wednesday canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang has long claimed are invasion rehearsals. The surprise declaration, which came in a pre-dawn dispatch in North Korea’s state media, appears to cool what had been an unusual flurry of outreach from a country that last year conducted a provocative series of weapons tests that had many fearing the region was on the edge of war.

It is still unclear, however, whether the North intends to scuttle all diplomacy or merely wants to gain leverage ahead of the planned June 12 talks between Kim and Trump. The statement by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency was released hours before the two Koreas were to meet at a border village to discuss how to implement their leaders’ recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve their overall ties. It called the two-week Max Thunder drills, which began Monday and reportedly include about 100 aircraft, an “intended military provocation” and an “apparent challenge” to an April summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, when the leaders met on their border in their countries’ third-ever summit talks since their formal division in 1948.

AURN Podcast Network


advanced divider
advanced divider