The North Korean leader’s New Year speech seemed to challenge President Trump to backtrack on the American goal of zero North Korean nuclear weapons.
Nearly two years into his presidency and more than six months after his historic summit meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, President Trump finds himself essentially back where he was at the beginning in achieving the ambitious goal of getting Mr. Kim to relinquish his nuclear arsenal.
That was the essential message of Mr. Kim’s annual New Year’s televised speech, where he reiterated that international sanctions must be lifted before North Korea will give up a single weapon, dismantle a single missile site or stop producing nuclear material.
The list of recent North Korean demands was a clear indicator of how the summit meeting in Singapore last June altered the optics of the relationship more than the reality. Those demands included that all joint military training between the United States and South Korea be stopped, that American nuclear and military capability within easy reach of the North be withdrawn, and that a peace treaty ending the Korean War be completed.
“It’s fair to say that not much has changed, although we now have more clarity regarding North Korea’s bottom line,’’ Evans J. R. Revere, a veteran American diplomat and former president of the Korea Society, wrote in an email.
“Pyongyang refused to accept the United States’ definition of ‘denuclearization’ in Singapore,’’ he wrote, which in the North’s view also includes a drastic pullback of any ability to threaten it with nuclear weapons. “The two competing visions of denuclearization have not changed since then.”
Mr. Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, who is supposed to turn Mr. Trump’s enthusiasms into diplomatic achievements, dispute such conclusions. They note that the tone of one of the world’s fiercest armed standoffs has improved. It has: Both leaders say they want to meet again.
In a tweet on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Kim’s offers not to produce or proliferate weapons, without mentioning the many caveats. He went on to say that he looked forward “to meeting with Chairman Kim who realizes so well that North Korea possesses great economic potential!”
Mr. Kim’s message, delivered in the style of a fireside chat from what appeared to be his library, had none of the old-style threats of turning Seoul into a “sea of fire” or striking the United States with a “nuclear sword of justice.”
It was full of olive branches. The toughest Mr. Kim got was a warning that “if the U. S. does not keep its promises” and continues “with sanctions and pressure” against North Korea, “then we, too, have no choice but to seek a new path for our country’s sovereignty.
