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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has asked his country to prepare for “dialogue and confrontation” with the United States – but with more confrontation, state media reported on Friday.
The comments come months after Kim ignored Washington’s attempts to restart the stalled nuclear negotiations, the first comments directed at President Joe Biden since the White House unveiled its new policy on how to deal with the threat from Pyongyang.
The state-controlled Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim provided a “detailed analysis” of Biden’s policy toward North Korea at a ruling party meeting on Thursday. She added that Kim “stressed the need to prepare for dialogue and confrontation, especially to be fully prepared for confrontation.”
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This two-track approach, coupling diplomacy and military threats, has been used by Kim before.
But the significance of these observations may lie not in their familiar content, but rather in their timing, according to Christina Fariali, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.
“For a few months now, the DPRK has been relatively silent about the direction of its foreign policy, especially with regard to the United States – but these comments are breaking that silence,” Varyali said, using the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
This may be because Kim “has now seen the new Biden administration snap into action” and begins charting its approach, Variale added. “North Korea is now able and willing to begin to state its position again.”
Kim’s comments also come days before Sung Kim, North Korea’s top US official, is due to visit South Korea. He will hold a meeting with South Korean and Japanese officials in Seoul on Saturday, a trip that underscores the importance of those alliances, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Kim Jong Un made the remarks during a Workers’ Party meeting in Pyongyang on Thursday.
In April, the White House completed a “policy review” on North Korea. Like previous administrations, it says it aims to “complete denuclearization” of North Korea.
But Biden administration officials made clear that the approach would be different from the “grand bargain” pursued by former President Donald Trump, and the “strategic patience” favored by former President Barack Obama – both of which failed to make sense of long-term progress.
Trump held a series of summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019, but they collapsed after Trump rejected Kim’s calls for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial concession of his nuclear capability.
Most experts say it is unreasonable for North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal while the authoritarian Kim dynasty is still in power. Monitoring bodies say it could stock up to 60 warheads, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles that some experts believe can strike the mainland United States.
North Korea views the ability to launch a devastating counterattack on American cities as the ultimate insurance policy against any American attempt to overthrow the Kim regime.
But experts believe that more modest progress may be possible, such as a kind of freeze on North Korea’s nuclear program.
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It also seems increasingly clear that North Korea needs to talk. The triple whammy of international sanctions, Covid-19 and floods has shrunk the already isolated and impoverished country’s economy and caused widespread food shortages.
On Tuesday, while appearing again at the general meeting of the Workers’ Party Central Committee, Kim warned of possible food shortages, saying that the food situation in North Korea was “now getting more tense.” He urged officials to find ways to boost agricultural production.
On human rights, Biden’s approach is a far cry from that of Trump. While Trump said he “fell in love” with Kim, Biden called him a “murderous dictator” and a “thug.”
International observers regard the North Korean leader among the world’s worst human rights abusers, as he runs a deeply repressive police state that controls nearly every aspect of public and private life.
In 2014, a United Nations panel said Kim’s North Korea was guilty of atrocities against its own people that were “remarkably similar” to those committed by Nazi Germany.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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