North Korea: North Korea on Tuesday asked the US to accept its status as a nuclear weapons state before any new summit with President Donald Trump, state news agency KCNA reported.
According to TRTworld.com, in a statement, Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader's sister and vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea, stated that North Korea's nuclear status is now "irreversible." She emphasized that the recognition of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a nuclear weapons state and the changes in its capabilities and geopolitical environment should be prerequisites for future discussions.
Trump became the first sitting US president to set foot on North Korean territory in 2019, as part of a series of negotiations with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. He met with Kim in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea during these negotiations.
Kim acknowledged that personal ties between the North Korean leader and Trump were not negative but cautioned that such relationships would be meaningless if the US continued to pursue denuclearization without acknowledging the geopolitical changes. She warned that if the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in past approaches, any potential DPRK-US meeting would remain merely a hope from the US side.