This photo published in the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivering a congratulatory address during a national meeting of veterans in Pyongyang on July 25, 2015. However, it has never been converted into a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreans in a technical state of war.
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North Korea has designated Monday as “Victory Day” – the 62nd anniversary of Korean Armistice.
Spokesperson say they only acknowledge Pyongyang’s pursuit of nukes; NK not interested in talking denuclearization The US State Department said on July 21 that it does not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state and that the country’s entire nuclear program should be a focus of negotiations. Previously that day, a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the US was “hassling over our nuclear issue after its agreement was reached on the Iranian nuclear issue”.
Seiler is the US envoy to the six-party talks – a forum aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program through negotiations.
South Korea is the first leg of the American envoy’s three-nation trip that will also include stops in China and Japan later this week. Seiler is now in Seoul, where he met Monday with his South Korean counterpart Kim Gunn and other officials on ways to deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations. When asked to clarify whether this meant the US did not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state, Kirby replied that it “acknowledg[es] the fact that” North Korea is pursuing such recognition.
The United States and five world powers struck a historic deal with Iran this month that will limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting U.S., EU and UN sanctions that have crippled its economy.
In a speech to veterans on Saturday, Kim Jong Un stressed the importance of instilling the country’s young people with the same fighting spirit and devotion as the generation that experienced the war. But he also stressed that North Korea has a new ace in the hole a nuclear arsenal of its own.
At a separate gathering held Sunday, Korean People’s Army Gen. Pak Yong Sik, who is believed to be the country’s new defense minister, said that if the United States does not abandon its hostile policies toward Pyongyang and provokes another war, the North is prepared to fight until “there would be no one left to sign a surrender document”.
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But according to the KCNA report, the North’s plan drastically contrasts with Seoul’s vision given its emphasis on “winning a war against U.S. imperialists” – not least because Washington is South Korea’s closest military ally.
