[During a Workers’ Party meeting,
the North Korean leader reviewed the new U.S. policy on his country and ordered
“counteraction,” state news media reported.]
After a monthslong policy
review, the White House said in April that it had reached “a
clear understanding” that the efforts of the past four
U.S. administrations had failed
to denuclearize North Korea, although they had tried both dialogue and
sanctions. It added that President Biden would pursue “a calibrated, practical
approach that is open to and will explore diplomacy” with North Korea.
During a meeting of the ruling
Workers’ Party on Thursday, Mr. Kim “made a detailed analysis” of the Biden
administration’s North Korea policy, “clarified appropriate strategic and
tactical counteraction” and “stressed the need to get prepared for both
dialogue and confrontation, especially to get fully prepared for
confrontation,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Although the news agency said that
the party had unanimously adopted a resolution, it did not disclose details. It
indicated that the meeting would continue on Friday.
Mr. Kim’s comments came days before
Sung Kim, Mr. Biden’s new special envoy on North Korea, was to meet with senior
South Korean and Japanese officials in Seoul next week to discuss how to deal
with North Korea. The North’s nuclear arsenal has been expanding despite
international sanctions and the country’s deepening economic difficulties.
This week, Mr. Kim warned of a
looming food shortage, prompting
some analysts in South Korea
to suggest that North Korea might be more willing to start a dialogue to win
outside aid.
During a summit in Washington last
month, Mr. Biden and his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in,
agreed to build on the 2018 Singapore agreement struck by Mr. Kim and President
Donald J. Trump. Both Mr.
Kim and Mr. Trump have counted that deal as one of their biggest foreign-policy
achievements, although it set only a vaguely worded goal of denuclearizing and
settling peace on the peninsula.
Officials in the Biden
administration have said they have been trying to establish contact with North
Korea to explain their new policy. The United
States and North Korea have also not disclosed details of their broadly worded
approaches, closely guarding them ahead of the possible resumption of
negotiations.
But North Korea has insisted since January that it will “counter the U.S. on
the principle of power
for power and good will for good will” — a stance Mr. Kim appeared to
reiterate this week.
Mr. Kim declared his
power-for-power approach during a
Workers’ Party congress in January, emphasizing that his country was
willing to establish a “new relationship” with the United States only if Washington withdrew its “hostile policy,” a stock
phrase the North has used to refer to sanctions and the threat it said the
United States military presence posed in the region. Mr. Kim also called his
country “a responsible nuclear weapons state” that would not misuse its nuclear
weapons.
North Korea successfully
launched three
intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2017 that it said were powerful
enough to reach parts or all of the continental United States. Mr. Kim then
declared a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests and met with Mr.
Trump three times between 2018 and early 2019 with the hopes of lifting
sanctions that have increasingly strangled his country’s economy.
But his diplomacy with Mr. Trump
collapsed without an agreement on how to dismantle the North’s nuclear arsenal
or when to ease sanctions.
North Korea has since resumed
missile tests that involved short-range projectiles. It demonstrated its
expanding weapons threat by launching
a new ballistic missile in March — the first such test by the country
in a year and its first significant provocation against the United States under
Mr. Biden.
Commercial satellite images have also shown activities in a nuclear
complex north of Pyongyang, where the country has been making fuel for atomic
bombs.
