By Joyce Lee and Jack Kim
SEOUL, Feb 26 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he would focus on expanding his country’s nuclear arsenal and that prospects for improving relations with the U.S. rested entirely on Washington’s attitude, state media KCNA reported on Thursday.
North Korea’s week-long Ninth Congress of the ruling Workers’ Party wrapped with a military parade in the capital Pyongyang on Wednesday, KCNA reported.
The Asian nation’s “international status has risen extraordinarily” as it laid out major policy goals for the next five years, Kim said.
“It is our party’s firm will to further expand and strengthen our national nuclear power, and thoroughly exercise its status as a nuclear state,” Kim said, according to KCNA. “We will focus on projects to increase the number of nuclear weapons and expand nuclear operational means.”
Kim also laid out North Korea’s plans to develop stronger intercontinental ballistic missiles, attack systems using artificial intelligence and unmanned drones, KCNA said.
However, Kim left the door open for discussions with the U.S.
“If the U.S. withdraws its policy of confrontation with North Korea by respecting our country’s current status… there is no reason why we cannot get along well with the U.S.,” Kim said, according to KCNA.
Kim has so far not accepted overtures by U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he met with three times during Trump’s first term.
Meanwhile, Kim called South Korea the “most hostile enemy” and ruled out discussions with its neighbour, saying “the conciliatory attitude that South Korea’s current government advocates on the surface is clumsily deceptive and crude,” according to KCNA.
Since entering office in June last year, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s government has made gestures to improve relations between neighbours still technically at war, though North Korea has consistently dismissed efforts by the liberal president.
Kim said Pyongyang “can initiate arbitrary action” if South Korea conducts “obnoxious behaviour” directed at North Korea.
“South Korea’s complete collapse cannot be ruled out,” Kim said according to KCNA.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Jack Kim; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
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