The White House has played down threats from North Korea to withdraw from a planned summit if Washington continued to pressure it to “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear weapons programme.
Pyongyang on Wednesday returned to the fiery rhetoric of the past with a flurry of missives castigating South Korean and US officials, in particular John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
“If they try to corner us and pressure us unilaterally to give up nuclear weapons, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue. We will have to reconsider whether to participate in the upcoming North Korea-US talks,” said Kim Kye Gwan, vice-minister of foreign affairs, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.