North Korea has said relations between its leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump are “not bad”, signalling potential willingness to enter into talks with the new US administration for the first time.
Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, a senior regime official, said a resumption of dialogue with Washington was possible, adding that the “personal relationship between our head of state and the present US president is not bad”, North Korean state media reported on Tuesday.
But she insisted any US attempt to persuade her country to give up its nuclear weapons would be regarded as “nothing but a mockery”, highlighting North Korea’s growing military strength and closer ties with Russia.
“The recognition of the irreversible position of [North Korea] as a nuclear weapons state and the hard fact that its capabilities and geopolitical environment have radically changed should be a prerequisite for predicting and thinking about everything in the future,” Kim Yo Jong said, according to North Korea’s state news agency.
Trump, who met Kim Jong Un on three occasions during his first term as president, claimed in March that his administration was in “communication” with Pyongyang. He also described North Korea as a “big nuclear nation” and praised Kim as a “very smart guy”.
But Pyongyang appeared to ignore Trump’s overtures. Analysts noted that Kim had left a summit with Trump in Hanoi in 2019 bitterly disappointed following the collapse of negotiations.
North Korea is now far less isolated than it was during Trump’s first term as a result of worsening US-China relations and Pyongyang’s own deepening relationship with Moscow in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Jeongmin Kim, executive director of Seoul-based information service Korea Risk Group, said that despite North Korea’s stronger military and diplomatic position, the prospect of even tacit US recognition of its right to possess nuclear weapons remained a tantalising reward.
