SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Sunday warned the United States that continued escalation of its sanctions and human-rights campaigns threatens to permanently shatter any chance of denuclearizing the country.
The U.S. is holding fast to its policy of exerting maximum economic and diplomatic pressure, even after President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore and claimed progress in denuclearizing the North.
In the months since the June meeting, the U.S. has continued to crack down on companies, individuals and ships accused of engaging in banned activities such as money laundering, cyberattacks and ship-to-ship transfers of fuel on North Korea's behalf.
On Sunday, North Korea expressed its growing frustration over the U.S.' persistent efforts to squeeze the country with additional sanctions over its dismal human-rights record. Last week, the Treasury Department blacklisted three of Kim's top aides, citing rights abuses and censorship.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that if senior State Department and other U.S. officials believed they could force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons by increasing sanctions and their "human rights racket to an unprecedented level," then it would be the "greatest miscalculation."
North Korea told the U.S. that sanctions and pressure -- as evident from the past -- won't force the country into action on its nuclear program.
"The U.S. should realize before it is too late that 'maximum pressure' would not work against us and take a sincere approach to implementing the Singapore DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Sunday, citing a statement from the policy research director of the Institute for American Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The DPRK is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.
"President Trump avails himself of every possible occasion to state his willingness to improve DPRK-U.S. relations," said the statement, which added that the State Department is "instead bent on bringing the DPRK-U.S. relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire."
North Korea has been proposing that relations be improved using a step-by-step approach "of resolving what is feasible one by one, by giving priority to confidence building," according to the statement.
The warning came amid a prolonged stalemate in negotiations between North Korea and the United States over the terms of denuclearization. In his meeting with Trump in June, Kim committed to "work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." In return, Trump promised peace on the peninsula, as well as security guarantees for "new" relations with North Korea.
Trump claimed that the North Korean nuclear crisis had been "largely solved" with the summit meeting. Since June, the North Koreans have refrained from criticizing Trump, whose impulsive and flamboyant negotiating style, analysts said, was favored by the North Koreans.
But the North has become increasingly angry at U.S. negotiators, as working-level talks have bogged down over who should take the first steps in putting the broadly worded Singapore agreement into action.
Washington is demanding a full declaration of the North's nuclear assets for future inspections, but North Korea insists that the United States first lift sanctions before it takes any steps toward denuclearizing. As the working-level talks stalled, the North Koreans called off a meeting that was to take place in New York last month between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a senior North Korean official.
Trump has said that he and Kim are likely to meet a second time, in January or February. But he also said he was "in no hurry" to negotiate with North Korea.
"Many people have asked how we are doing in our negotiations with North Korea -- I always reply by saying we are in no hurry," Trump tweeted Friday. "We are doing just fine!"
In its latest sanctions against North Korea, the Treasury Department targeted Choe Ryong Hae, who leads the powerful Organization and Guidance Department of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and who is widely considered the No. 2 official in Kim's inner circles.
The other top officials designated under the sanctions were Jong Kyong Thaek, North Korea's minister of state security; and Pak Kwang Ho, the director of the party's Propaganda and Agitation Department.
Information for this article was contributed by Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times and by Nour Al Ali of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 12/17/2018