North Korea says will ignore US while 'hostile policy' in place: Yonhap
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Thursday it will ignore attempts by the US to contact it, the South's Yonhap news agency reported, hours before President Joe Biden's top envoys were to hold talks in Seoul.
"No US-DPRK contact nor dialogue can take place until the US withdraws its hostile DPRK policy," Yonhap cited senior North Korean minister Choe Son Hui as saying in a statement carried by state media.
"Therefore, we will continue to ignore such attempts by the US in the future," she added.
The comments from Choe, who is the North's first vice foreign minister, come with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin in Seoul for the second leg of an Asian trip to bolster a united front against the nuclear-armed North and an increasingly assertive China.
Seoul and Washington are security allies and kicked off joint military exercises last week, leading to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's influential sister warning the new US administration against "causing a stink at its first step" if it wants to "sleep in peace for coming four years".
The statement by Kim Yo Jong, a key adviser to her brother, was the reclusive state's first explicit reference to the new leadership in Washington, more than four months after Biden was elected to replace Donald Trump — although she still did not mention the 78-year-old Democrat by name.
The US envoys will meet on Thursday with President Moon Jae-in, who brokered the talks process between Kim and Trump in 2018.
Trump's unorthodox approach to foreign policy saw him trade insults and threats of war with Kim Jong Un before an extraordinary diplomatic bromance that saw a series of headline-grabbing meetings.
But ultimately no progress was made towards Washington's declared aim of denuclearising North Korea, with a second summit in Hanoi in early 2019 breaking up without an agreement and Pyongyang still under multiple international sanctions for its banned weapons programmes.
And it has isolated itself more than ever by closing its borders for more than a year to protect itself against the coronavirus pandemic that first emerged in neighbouring China.
Blinken and Austin are consulting on a review of Washington's policy towards the North being carried out by the new administration.
The United States formally concluded that North Korea ordered the murder of Kim Jong-Nam, a half-brother and potential rival to ruler Kim Jong-Un, with the VX nerve agent.
"This public display of contempt for universal norms against chemical weapons use further demonstrates the reckless nature of North Korea and underscores that we cannot afford to tolerate a North Korean WMD program of any kind," US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
The finding triggered another layer of US economic sanctions against Pyongyang, just as South Korea reported that the regime is ready for talks to end a nuclear standoff.
Suspected North Korean hackers have attempted an attack targeting a major joint military exercise between Seoul and Washington that starts on Monday, South Korean police said.
South Korea and the United States will kick off the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills on Monday through August 31 to counter growing threats from the nuclear-armed North.
Pyongyang views such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion and has repeatedly warned it would take "overwhelming" action in response. — AFP
The United States says it was committed to freeing an American soldier who crossed into North Korea, as it voiced caution on remarks attributed to him by Pyongyang.
In North Korea's first comments about last month's crossing of Travis King, state media said Tuesday that the soldier, who is Black, said he fled "racial discrimination" and bore "ill feeling" toward the US Army.
"We would caution everyone to consider the source here. That is incredibly important," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tells reporters when asked about King's purported remarks. — AFP
A US soldier is believed to have been detained by North Korea after crossing the heavily fortified border -- an incident likely to further aggravate Washington's troubled relations with the nuclear-armed state.
Hours later, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to the South Korean military -- an apparent response to the first visit by an American nuclear-armed submarine to a South Korean port in decades.
The events underscored the diplomatic tightrope being walked by Seoul and Washington in the face of an increasingly assertive Pyongyang. — AFP
North Korea threatens to shoot down any US spy planes violating its airspace and condemns Washington's plans to deploy a nuclear missile submarine near the Korean peninsula.
A spokesperson for the North's Ministry of National Defense says the United States has "intensified espionage activities beyond the wartime level", with "provocative" flights made by US spy aircraft over eight straight days this month, and one reconnaissance plane intruding into its airspace over the East Sea "several times".
"There is no guarantee that such shocking accident as downing of the US Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen in the East Sea of Korea," the spokesperson says in a statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. — AFP
North Korea has accused a US spy aircraft of violating its airspace and condemned Washington's plans to deploy a nuclear missile submarine near the Korean peninsula.
A spokesperson for the North's Ministry of National Defence said "provocative" flights were made by US spy aircraft this month, with one reconnaissance plane intruding into its airspace over the East Sea "several times".
"There is no guarantee that such shocking accident as downing of the U.S. Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen in the East Sea of Korea," the spokesperson said in a statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. — AFP
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