North Korea says action by U.S. could lead to peace

TIME reports North Korea saying the United States needs to end its “nuclear-based threats and blackmail” and respond to the North’s recent diplomatic overture to formally end the decades-old Korean conflict.

Speaking in an interview Tuesday in London with Associated Press Television News, senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official Jong Tong Hak said a permanent peace settlement on the Korean Peninsula first requires a North Korean-U.S. agreement.

Discussing North Korea’s view of the root cause of tensions, he blamed what he described as “the U.S. government’s decades of hostile policies against the DPRK and its endless nuclear-based threats, blackmail and manipulative schemes.” He said Washington provides “strategic nuclear weapons” to South Korea, “in other words the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers it always pushes (toward the DPRK) and the strategic nuclear bombers it always has flying in the skies above the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.”

Jong said a compromise to break the impasse requires decisive action by Washington. “The issue of signing a peace treaty between the DPRK and the United States depends on the policy determinations of the U.S. administration,” he said, adding that Washington must “make a policy decision to respect our republic’s sovereignty and end the decades-long hostility between the DPRK and the U.S. to guarantee peace in the Korean Peninsula.”

The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, is mulling whether North Korea should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

This entry was posted in DPRK Government by Grant Montgomery.