北외무성 "폼페이오 아닌 다른 인물 대화상대로 나서길 바라"
North Korea’s foreign ministry slammed America's top diplomat over his recent remarks on denuclearization.
Pyeongyang now wants to discuss the issue with a different official instead of Mike Pompeo.
The regime even threatened that no one will be able to predict how things would unfold on the Peninsula, if Washington doesn’t remove the obstacles to denuclearization... before the year is up.
Lee Ji-won zooms in on the renewed tensions between the two sides.
North Korea's foreign ministry said Thursday that it wants someone other than Mike Pompeo to join the next round of denuclearization talks.
The North's Korean Central News Agency published comments Thursday from a foreign ministry official in charge of U.S. affairs... saying Pompeo is (quote) "blabbering thoughtless words."
He said Pompeo is wrong in his interpretation of Kim Jong-un's recent comments about giving the U.S. until the end of the year to change its stance.
Pompeo, he said, is stupidly trying to shrug off that pressure by claiming the North simply wants to finish the "working-level talks" by that time.
According to North Korea watchers, Pompeo did not say that publicly but may have done so behind the scenes.
The official said it's unclear if Pompeo meant to interpret Kim's words that way,... but called it an extremely dangerous move.
He went on to reference Pompeo agreeing in Congress earlier this month that the North Korean leader is a tyrant, which he said was Pompeo revealing what a low person he is.
He then reiterated what Kim Jong-un said -- that by the end of the year, the U.S. has to get rid of the obstacles in the way of the North denuclearizing. Otherwise, no one knows how things might change.
He claimed that Pompeo's always putting a wet blanket on things when they're going well,... and he's concerned that future talks won't work out.
This is believed to be a reference to what the North's vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui said last month that Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton had stopped Trump from being flexible on sanctions.
But despite the criticism of Pompeo, the official emphasized that it's a good thing their leader is on good terms with President Trump.
This is seen as North Korea wanting to continue the dialogue,... but an expert says it's not a good strategy.
"It won't work. Ultimately, Trump will have to listen to his aides. But what the North thinks is that the top-down approach will work,... so it's blaming all the failure on Trump's aides while putting its hope in Trump."
It's unlikely, according to the expert, that the U.S. will put someone else in charge of the talks.
The North will come back to the table with or without him, so long as the conditions are right.
Lee Ji-won, Arirang News.
