North Korea threatens to cancel nuclear summit after comments by Mike Pence

  After weeks of progress on North Korea, things began to sour a bit a couple of weeks ago when Kim Jong Un threatened to cancel the nuclear summit over planned war games between the United States and South Korea.

  Earlier this week Mike Pence said the military option was still on the table with North Korea, Donald Trump hinted at the possibility the summit might not go off in June as scheduled, and Mike Pompeo reaffirmed that Donald Trump would walk away from the table rather than sign a bad deal. 

  North Korea has taken offence to Mike Pence’s comments and is threatening to cancel the summit for a second time, here is more:

North Korea will reconsider the planned summit with the United States if Washington sticks to “unlawful and outrageous acts,” its vice foreign minister said Thursday.

In a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, Choe Son-hui, a North Korean vice foreign minister, said that whether the June 12 summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump will happen as scheduled entirely rests on the decision and behavior of the U.S.

“Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” Choe said.

“In case the U.S. offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-U.S. summit,” she added.

“U.S. Vice-President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the U.S. needs complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization, and so on,” she said. “As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president.”

  Both sides want to come into the talks from a position of strength and neither side wants to look weak shortly before the summit. Hopefully this is just a little positioning before the summit, we have come too far at this point to let it slip away.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium