North Korea has rejected Donald Trump’s overture of scaling back a major military exercise with South Korea and has denied his claim of being in communication with Kim Jong Un.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korean leader, said the American president’s reduction of the drills was “not even worth commenting on” and Pyongyang found it “completely uninteresting”.
If Washington saw the scaling back of the drills “as some kind of goodwill measure,” she said, “they will not get the answer they desire”.
Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of two major annual exercises conducted by the militaries of South Korea and the US to prepare for a potential conflict with North Korea.
Pyongyang has long denounced the wargames as rehearsals for invasion of North Korea and objected to the presence of American forces on the Korean peninsula.
This week, Mr Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale back Ulchi Freedom Shield, which had begun that very day and could not be cancelled outright. He said the exercise was expensive and sent “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile" towards a country that was "unthreatening and respectful" during his time as president. The exercise was curtailed from 11 days to five, ending on Friday.
North Korea only responded on Wednesday night, despite Mr Trump’s push to revive diplomacy. He shared photos with Mr Kim from their summits during his first term as US president and said that he expected to meet the North Korean leader again.
“The provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won’t change even though their duration and size were reduced,” Ms Kim said.
She rejected Mr Trump's claim that he was communicating with Mr Kim, saying she was “completely unaware” of any such contact.
At the same time, she said Mr Kim retained “fond personal memories and feelings” towards Mr Trump and that relations between the two leaders remained “excellent”.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump said he planned to meet Mr Kim later this year.
"I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he's going to be fine as long as we’ve a smart president," the president told reporters at the White House. "The fact that I get along with him, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.”
“He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons," he claimed in an unusual statement about the specific number of weapons held by North Korea. "They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn't have allowed it. But he's got them."
Mr Trump and Mr Kim met three times during the US president’s first term, in Singapore, Hanoi and at the inter-Korean border.
The first summit produced a joint commitment to work towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but the second summit in Hanoi ended abruptly without an agreement after the two sides failed to resolve differences over sanctions relief and North Korea’s nuclear programme. They briefly revived engagement at the border in June 2019 and agreed to resume working-level talks, but those negotiations later stalled.
North Korea has since formed a strategic defence alliance with Russia under which Pyongyang has expanded its conventional arsenal and helped Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine by sending troops and weaponry. Pyongyang has also deepened relations with China.
Ms Kim referenced Russia five times in her statement and said North Korea “fully supports the just actions” of Moscow in Ukraine.
She said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that Pyongyang was sending another 50,000 soldiers to aid Russia’s war effort were “entirely baseless”.
On Friday, South Korean defence minister Ahn Gyu Back said he believed Pyongyang was interested in Mr Trump's overtures for dialogue.
Mr Ahn also said Mr Trump's comment that North Korea had 57 nuclear weapons differed from South Korea's assessment of between 80 and 120 warheads.
“But I am very limited in providing a specific figure," he told lawmakers.
South Korean president Lee Jae Myung took a more optimistic tone and said Mr Trump’s move “feels like a momentous decision born out of deep deliberation to move beyond hostility and confrontation towards building peace on the Korean Peninsula”.
He hoped that it “lead to the resumption of dialogue and ultimately bring about a stable peace regime”.
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