North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to pursue the “hardest” anti-American policy, state media reported on Sunday, less than a month before Donald Trump takes office as US president.
Trump's return to the White House raises the prospect of high-level diplomacy with North Korea. During his first term, Trump met with Kim three times for negotiations on the nuclear program. Many experts, however, say a quick resumption of the Kim-Trump summit is unlikely as Trump will first focus on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. North Korea's support for Russia's war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to restore diplomacy, experts say.
During the five-day plenary meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, which ended on Friday, Kim called the US “the most reactionary country that considers anti-communism as its permanent state policy.” Kim said that The US, South Korea and Japan Security Partnership expands into a “nuclear military bloc for aggression.”
“This reality clearly shows in which direction we should move and what we should do and how,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
It said Kim Jong Un's speech “explained the strategy of the most severe anti-American countermeasures to be deployed” by North Korea for its long-term national interests and security.
KCNA did not elaborate on the anti-US strategy. But it said Kim had set goals for strengthening military capabilities through advances in defense technology and stressed the need to improve the mental toughness of North Korean soldiers.
Trump and Kim's previous meetings not only ended their exchange of fiery rhetoric and threats of destruction, but also established a personal bond. Trump once famously said that he and Kim “fell in love.” But their talks eventually broke down in 2019 as they argued over US sanctions against the North.
Since then, North Korea has dramatically increased the pace of its weapons tests to build more reliable nuclear missiles aimed at the US and its allies. The US and South Korea responded by expanding their bilateral military drills as well as a trilateral one involving Japan, prompting sharp rebuke from the North, which views such US-led drills as rehearsals for an invasion.
Further complicating efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic and political benefits is deepening military cooperation with Russia.
According to the estimates of the USA, Ukraine and South Korea, North Korea sent more than 10,000 soldiers and conventional weapons systems to support Moscow's war against Ukraine. There are fears that Russia could give North Korea advanced weapons technology in return, including help to build more powerful nuclear missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said last week that 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed and wounded in the fighting in Russia's Kursk region. It was Ukraine's first significant assessment of North Korean casualties since North Korean troops began deploying to Russia in October.
Russia and China, which are in separate disputes with the US, have repeatedly blocked US efforts to impose additional UN sanctions on North Korea, despite its repeated missile tests in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Last month, Kim said his past talks with the United States only confirmed Washington's “unchanged” hostility toward his country and called the nuclear buildup the only way to counter external threats.