North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong said on Saturday that Pyongyang was ready to halt its nuclear tests if the U.S. suspended its joint military exercises with rival South Korea. For a growing number of North Koreans, however, money has overtaken Party membership when it comes to getting ahead, according to defectors who have fled to rival South Korea.
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This will also be the first such party conference under North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
It would not be a surprise if Pyongyang conducts its fifth nuclear test before its party congress, said Dr Victor Cha, a U.S. expert on North Korea who served as adviser to former United States president George W. Bush. In the video clip, the President makes the shocking statement that the United States “could destroy North Korea”.
Despite sanctions, the North’s nuclear and missile development continues, Blinken said.
“Our first priority is to protect the American people and our allies, [South] Korea and Japan”, Obama said. South Korea said Wednesday, April 27, 2016, that North Korea has built a half-size mock-up of the South’s presidential palace at a firing range in what looked like preparations for a live-fire drill.
“If North Korea continues to stage a provocation in disregard of warnings of the global community, it will hasten its collapse”, Park said, according to Yonhap.
Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government official as saying there were indications North Korea might try to launch another of the missiles, which is not known to have been successfully flight-tested.
He left North Korea in 2011 but has since returned several times and is often interviewed about his relationship with the secretive dictator. “What is true, though, is that they have a tendency to view some of the immediate regional issues or disputes as a zero-sum game”, he said.
“Rather than operate under worldwide norms and rules, their attitude is, ‘We’re the biggest kids around here, and we will push aside the Philippines or the Vietnamese”, Mr. Obama said.
“We just want them to be partners with us. Where they break out of worldwide rules and norms, we will hold them to account”.
But Wang repeated China’s “serious concern” about the possible deployment of the advanced US missile shield or a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) unit in South Korea, the Chinese ministry said in a statement.
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“There are indications that the North may fire a Musudan missile that it launched and failed on Kim Il Sung’s birthday on April 15”, an unnamed government official told the agency.
