'North Korea should be ready for dialogue with US'

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that the country should be ready for a dialogue, as well as a confrontation with the US, state media reported on Friday. This is the first time Kim has spoken of the US since President Joe Biden took office in January, the Seoul-based Yonhap news Agency reported.

During a key Workers' Party meeting, Kim "made detailed analysis of the policy tendency of the newly emerged US administration toward our Republic and clarified appropriate strategic and tactical counteraction and the direction of activities to be maintained in the relations with the U.S. in the days ahead", Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a report.

"The General Secretary stressed the need to get prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially to get fully prepared for confrontation in order to protect the dignity of our state and its interests for independent development and to reliably guarantee the peaceful environment and the security of our state," it said.

Kim also called for "sharply and promptly reacting to and coping with the fast-changing situation and concentrating efforts on taking stable control of the situation on the Korean peninsula", the KCNA added. The Biden administration has recently completed its months-long review of its North Korean policy and said it would pursue a "calibrated, practical approach" toward the goal of the complete denuclearization of the Peninsula. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Biden met at a bilateral summit last month and agreed to pursue diplomacy to resolve the North's nuclear issue.

Kim's message also comes as the new US special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, is set to travel to Seoul later this week for trilateral talks with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, reports Yonhap News Agency. (IANS)

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