North Korea sees patch up talks with US as a distant possibility

Seoul: North Korea sees the normalisation of relations with the US administration as a distant possibility that it feels that the talks to sort out issues could reap no results.

"We are not considering even the possibility of any contact with the US, let alone having it, which would get us nowhere, only taking up precious time," said Foreign Minister Ri Son-Gwon, in a statement released by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

While referring to a statement by Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Ri also said his Ministry "welcomes the clear-cut press statement issued by the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, which is to brush off hasty judgment, conjecture and expectation of the US", Xinhua news agency reported.

However, the US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday had called Kim Jong-un's comments of preparing both dialogue and conflict with Washington as an "interesting signal" and added that the US will "wait to see whether they are followed up with any kind of more direct communication to us about a potential path forward".the as 

The remarks made during a key Workers' Party meeting on June 17 in Pyongyang marked the first time that Kim Jong-un spoke of the US since President Joe Biden took office in January after the denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been stalled since the second Kim-Trump summit ended without agreement in February 2019 in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.