Tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul
Pyonyang and Seoul have shown signs of growing arms escalation on the Korean peninsula since the summer, as the regime continues to reject offers of unconditional dialogue from Washington – which it claims has no hostile intentions – to rekindle the denuclearization dialogue, stalled since 2019.
In his speech, Kim again accused Seoul, with whom Pyonyang recently resumed communications, of using “double standards” in strengthening its military capabilities and executing combined maneuvers with Washington while calling the North Korean weapons tests “provocative” and ” threat”.
Kim became the first North Korean president to meet with an incumbent US president at the 2018 Singapore summit with Donald Trump.
Negotiations on a possible lifting of sanctions in exchange for a paralysis of Pyongyang’s arms program were interrupted a year later, after a failed summit between the two in Hanoi.
Biden, who arrived at the White House at the beginning of the year, assures that he wants to resume these contacts with North Korea and proposes a meeting without preconditions.
Washington is a close ally of South Korea and maintains 28,500 troops in that country to defend it from a possible invasion from the North, as happened in 1950.