Amid mounting tension between the U.S. and
North Korea over the hacking incident at Sony Pictures Entertainment and annual tension incited by the
ROK-U.S. joint military exercises, relations between the two nations are
expected to further deteriorate after North Korea’s reaction to recent comments by U.S. President Barack Obama.
In a statement carried by the official
Korean Central News Agency on February 4th, the North’s National Defense
Commission declared, with a litany of scathing criticism, that it would be
pointless to engage in dialogue with the U.S. after President Barack Obama gave a
speech on “bringing down the regime.”
“It is the decision of the army and people
of the DPRK to have no longer need or willingness to sit at [the] negotiating
table with the U.S. since the latter seeks to stamp out the ideology of the
former and ‘bring down’ its social system,” the statement read.
Referring to the president as the “root of
all evil,” a “power abuser,” and a “wild dog,” among other inflammatory remarks
typical of the North’s rhetoric, the statement is assumed to reflect the views of Kim Jong Eun himself, given its release from the highest organ of state authority,
the National Defense Commission.
This response, in conjunction with the
cancellation of the recently proposed meeting between Ambassador Sung Kim, the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, and the North’s First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, relations between the two
nations seems only likely to worsen. Moreover, Key Resolve [ROK-U.S. joint military exercises], deemed
by the North as training for an invasion into its territory, slated to start
at the end of this month and continue until the beginning of March, is predicted to bring on a prolonged period of absolute stagnation of ties between the two nations.
Of these developments, Senior Researcher of the Korea Institute
for National Unification, Dr. Park Young Ho, told the Daily NK, “The North’s
perspective seems to be that if their status as a nuclear state is acknowledged and accepted, it will agree to talks with the U.S., but the
U.S. does not share this stance.”
Dr. Park asserted the present situation to press on for the foreseeable future, stating, “President Obama made a firm
speech in order to threaten the North and implicate that there will only be
opportunities for improvement if the North shows sincerity for change. Despite
the existence of the ‘New York Channel,’ it seems that it will be quite
difficult to see improved relations between the U.S. and North Korea anytime soon”.
