North Korea on Tuesday urged the US to abandon any attempts to persuade it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

US President Donald Trump, who began his second term in January, is interested in resuming talks with North Korea on denuclearisation.

During his first term in the years of 2018 and 2019, Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times in Singapore, Vietnam and at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.

Although the Trump administration wanted North Korea to give up its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, no deal was struck between the two sides and Pyongyang continues to advance its nuclear aspirations.

Trump-Kim relationship ‘not bad’

Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, said Trump’s personal relationship with the North Korean leader is ‘not bad’.

However, she said if the US administration were to use the Trump-Kim relationship to push for North Korean denuclearisation, Pyongyang would consider it ‘nothing but a mockery’.

“If the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-US meeting will remains as a ‘hope’ of the US side,” Kim Yo Jong said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim Yo Jong’s remarks suggest that North Korea is ruling out complete denuclearisation as an option if talks are relaunched with the US.

Trump seeking same objectives

A White House official told Reuters news agency that Trump is still seeking the same objectives in regards to North Korea as he did in the first term.

“The president retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully denuclearised North Korea,” the unnamed US official told Reuters.

During Trump’s first term, the president had sometimes an unusually friendly relationship with Kim after a tense start, with Trump saying the two leaders ‘fell in love’.

After nuclear negotiations broke down in October 2019, the two leaders began exchanging insults, with North Korea in December of that year threatening to call him a ‘dotard’.

How the ties evolved?

Since Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021, US and North Korea ties have grown more fraught.

Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, did not continue the flashy diplomatic engagements with Kim that were a feature of Trump’s first administration. Instead, the Biden administration chose to deepen ties with South Korea and Japan in a bid to further isolate Pyongyang.

North Korea, meanwhile, has been growing closer with Russia since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. North Korea has sent weapons and troops to assist Russia’s assault, with Moscow in turn backing North Korea’s nuclear programme.

The US firmly opposed the invasion of Ukraine during Biden’s term, with Trump in his second term also pushing Russia to commit to a ceasefire and end the conflict.

DW