North Korea Threatens to Call Off U.S. Summit Over Military Drills

Surprise declaration comes as senior North Korean diplomat says Pyongyang will refuse to be pressured into abandoning its nukes

A US Air Force F-22 Raptor lands at Gwangju Air Base in the southwestern city of Gwangju on May 16, 2018.

North Korea canceled a high-level meeting Wednesday with South Korea and threatened also to call off a historic summit planned later this month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang has long claimed are invasion rehearsals. A senior North Korean diplomat said Pyongyang will refuse to be pressured into abandoning its nukes.



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North Korea's first vice foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, said Pyongyang has no interest in a summit with Washington if it's going to be a "one-sided" affair where it's pressured to give up its nukes.


"We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations," he said. "But we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting."

The North canceled the talks hours before the two Koreas were to meet at a border village to discuss how to implement their leaders' recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve their overall ties.



South Korea's Defense Ministry said the drills will go on as planned.


Kim Jong Un took power weeks after former Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces amid a popular uprising in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gadhafi's death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived U.S. threats.


South Korea called North Korea's move "regrettable" and demanded a quick return to talks.

Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Baek Tae-hyun said the North's decision goes against the spirit of last month's inter-Korean summit, where the Koreas' leaders issued a vague vow on the "complete denuclearization" on the Korean Peninsula and pledged permanent peace between the rivals. He didn't provide a straightforward answer on whether Seoul sees the North's talks cancellation as potentially affecting the meeting between Trump and Kim.







The North's statement Wednesday comes amid a slew of surprising moves in recent weeks.





North Korea also has a long history of launching provocations or scrapping deals with Seoul and Washington at the last minute. In 2013, North Korea abruptly cancelled reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War just days before they were held to protest what it called rising animosities ahead of joint drills between Seoul and Washington. A year earlier in 2012, the North conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch weeks after it agreed to suspend weapons tests in return for food assistance.