North Korea, US resume verbal war
By Lee Min-hyung
North Korea is increasing tension with the United States in an escalating war of words, urging the latter to stop slandering the regime’s peace efforts during the ongoing winter Olympics.
“We have opened a new era of peace on the Korean Peninsula, but the U.S. is viciously obstructing our good will and efforts to actively engage in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics,” the Rodong Sinmun, the propaganda newspaper of Pyongyang’s Workers’ Party of Korea, said in a commentary Monday.
The aggressive rhetoric came in response to the strong anti-Pyongyang stance of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. He stepped up the rhetoric against the North during the Olympics, saying that the purpose of his PyeongChang visit was largely aimed at sending the regime a clear message that international society and the U.S. will never stop pressing the North to give up its nuclear weapons.
“Unless Washington clears away its anti-Pyongyang policies and stops threatening us, we will never take away our nuclear aim at the country,” said the state-run propaganda media. “We have obtained a war deterrent to brace for a potential nuclear threat from the U.S.,” it said.
The verbal provocation has intensified in recent weeks between the two countries, with Pence condemning the North for seeking to steal the Olympics limelight by engaging in a series of inter-Korean activities.
Last month, Pyongyang agreed to team up with Seoul to hold peaceful sporting events during the Olympics, in a rare sign of reconciliation. They include a joint women’s ice hockey team and the dispatch of a North Korean music troupe to Seoul and PyeongChang.
North Korea also kept a low-key posture in its annual military parade Friday without broadcasting the regime’s show of force live.
Pence, however, continued to take a hard-line stance on the North on his way back to Washington, Sunday night.
“No pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” the Washington Post quoted Pence as saying, Sunday. “The maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify.”
Before his arrival at PyeongChang last week, expectations were that he may have talks with some of the high-level members of North Korea’s Olympics delegation.
But both sides finally ended up ignoring each other. The North Koreans delegation - led by leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong and Kim Yong-nam, the regime’s ceremonial head - also ended their three-day visit here and returned to Pyongyang, Sunday.