N Korea urges offensive policy ahead of deadline
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called at a ruling party meeting for “positive and offensive measures” to ensure security ahead of a year-end deadline he has set for denuclearisation talks with the United States, state media KCNA said yesterday.
Kim convened a weekend meeting of top Workers’ Party officials to discuss policy matters amid rising tension over his deadline for Washington to soften its stance in stalled negotiations aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.
At a Sunday session, Kim suggested action in the areas of foreign affairs, the munitions industry and armed forces, stressing the need to take “positive and offensive measures for fully ensuring the sovereignty and security of the country,” KCNA said, without elaborating.
The meeting was the largest plenary session of the party’s 7th Central Committee since its first gathering in 2013 under Kim, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.
The key policy-making organ drew several hundred attendees, state television showed yesterday. The committee also met in 2018 and in April but on a much smaller scale, reports Reuters. KCNA said the meeting was still under way. It was the first time the gathering has lasted more than one day since Kim took power in late 2011, ministry spokesman Lee Sang-min told a regular briefing.
“By ‘positive and offensive measures,’ they might mean highly provocative action against the United States and also South Korea,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean studies in Seoul.
The White House said Sunday it would consider “other tools” beyond personal diplomacy if North Korea went ahead with a threatened “Christmas gift” that could reignite global tensions over its nuclear program, reports AFP.
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