North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is open to a third summit with US President Donald Trump but that failure to reach mutually acceptable terms risked reviving tensions, state media KCNA said on Friday.
“It is essential for the US to quit its current method and approach us with a new one,” Kim said in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly on Friday.
“If it [the United States] keeps thinking that way, it will never be able to move the DPRK even a knuckle nor gain any interests no matter how many times it may sit for talks with the DPRK.”
Kim said he would wait until the end of the year “for the US to make a courageous decision” on another meeting, after his most recent summit with Trump in Vietnam broke down and both sides left without an agreement.
Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore in June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.
Washington has blamed the February deadlock on the North’s demands for sanctions relief in return for limited nuclear disarmament, but Pyongyang said it had wanted only some of the measures eased.
In Hanoi, the US came “to the talks only racking its brain to find ways that are absolutely impracticable” and did “not really ready itself to sit with us face-to-face and settle the problem,” Kim said.