12/31/19
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said his country no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, its official media reported on Wednesday, the strongest indication yet that the country could soon resume such tests. Mr. Kim also said the world would witness a new strategic weapon “in the near future,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, though no details were provided. The North had set a Dec. 31 deadline for the United States to make at least some concessions, complaining that its 18 months of diplomacy with Mr. Trump had yielded limited results. During the party meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Kim said his country “will shift to a shocking actual action” that will make the United States “pay for the pains sustained by our people,” the North Korean news agency said. Kim stressed that North Korea “should more actively push forward the project for developing strategic weapons” now that Washington’s “gangster-like acts” have stymied economic growth. “If the U.S. persists in its hostile policy toward the D.P.R.K., there will never be denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula,” he said, using the initials for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “The scope and depth of bolstering our deterrent will be properly coordinated depending on the U.S. future attitude to the D.P.R.K.”
