N. Korea says it’s willing to talk to U.S. ‘at any time, at any format’ The statement came in response to President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a historic summit with Kim Jong Un planned for next month.

North Korea signaled its willingness to engage in talks with the United States “at any time, at any format,” just hours after President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled his planned summit with Kim Jong Un and scolded the North Korean leader in a letter for “tremendous anger and open hostility” while bluntly reminding Kim of the United States’ nuclear prowess.

Kim Kye Gwan, first vice minister of foreign affairs, issued a statement on Friday, local time, saying the North was “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities” to reconsider talks, The Associated Press reported. He added that his country’s “objective and resolve to do our best for the sake of peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and all humankind remain unchanged.”


The conciliatory language stood in contrast to a statement, made overnight Wednesday, in which another vice minister of foreign affairs, Choe Son Hui, warned that Pyongyang could “make the U.S. taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined.”

Trump wrote in his letter to Kim Jong Un: “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

The scuttling of the summit, which had been scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, is a blow to U.S. efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, as well as Trump’s desire to land a legacy-making deal with the hermetic nation.

Despite the North’s recent softer tone, the cancellation also raises the risk of conflict in East Asia and has rattled U.S. allies South Korea and Japan.

Trump and his aides sought to pin the blame for the canceled meeting entirely on North Korea. During a televised public address midday Thursday from the White House's Roosevelt Room, Trump directly linked the decision to recent inflammatory remarks made by North Korean officials.

Breaking News Alerts Get breaking news when it happens — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

In her statement, issued through official state media, Choe had said that if talks were canceled, the U.S. and North Korea could instead engage in a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”

She also referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy“ for his recent comments defending national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton had suggested that the U.S. wanted to pursue a nuclear deal with North Korea similar to the one it struck with Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi in the early 2000s. But North Korea took that as a negative sign because Qadhafi was ousted and killed several years after giving up his nuclear program.

A senior White House official said the statement was simply the latest in a “trail of broken promises“ that led Trump to abandon the talks. Last week, North Korean officials failed to show up in Singapore for a series of meetings to lay the groundwork for the presidential summit, the official said, declaring: “They simply stood us up.“

In recent days, the North Koreans have also been unresponsive to U.S. attempts to reach them. “We simply couldn’t get them to pick up the phone,“ the official said. In addition, the North Korean government did not keep its promise to invite experts to observe what it has said was the closure of one of its nuclear test sites, casting doubt on what really happened, the official said.

Pyongyang exhibited “a profound lack of good faith,“ said the official, who sidestepped questions on the role that Bolton‘s and Pence's comments may have played.

Responding to the cancellation, South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, urged the leaders of the United States and North Korea to talk directly to each other.

“Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of permanent peace are historic tasks that can neither be abandoned nor delayed,“ Moon said in an emergency meeting with his top security officials at his office on Friday, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Trump was briefed on North Korea‘s harsh statement on Wednesday night, and slept on the matter before deciding on Thursday morning to call off the summit, according to the White House official. In his letter — which was released publicly Thursday morning and, according to a senior White House official, was dictated entirely by the president — Trump made sure to remind North Korea of the United States' formidable nuclear arsenal, hearkening back to when the president boasted that his nuclear button was “bigger and more powerful“ than Kim‘s.

“You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used,“ Trump wrote.

Trump, however, also thanked Kim for the “wonderful dialogue” that had developed in recent weeks between the two nations while leaving the door open to a rescheduled summit in the future.

“If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write,” the president said. “The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth.”

He added: “This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.”

The president, later delivering remarks alongside Pence and other administration officials prior to the signing of a financial reform bill, even broached the possibility of the summit resuming as originally scheduled. “It‘s possible that the existing summit could take place, or a summit at some later date,“ he said.

The letter‘s stunning reversal came after the president suggested earlier this week that plans for the meeting might be delayed amid renewed tension with the North Korean government, which last week criticized the U.S. for engaging in joint military exercises with South Korea and appeared to back away from their pledge to discuss de-nuclearization.

Trump on Tuesday declared that “it may not work out for June 12” regarding the planned meeting in Singapore between him and Kim. The president on Wednesday said a decision would be made “next week“ about whether the summit would go on as scheduled, amid reports that high-level U.S. and North Korean officials were set to hold a pivotal planning meeting over the weekend in Singapore.

Testifying before lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said North Korean officials had failed to respond to inquiries from the U.S. about gathering "preparation teams" ahead of the summit. “We had received no response to our inquiries from them,“ he said. Pompeo, who helped launch negotiations with North Korea with a secretive visit to Pyongyang earlier this year, told legislators that he was involved in crafting the president‘s letter, but that the cancellation decision ultimately fell to Trump.

Trump has long insisted that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula be at the center of discussions with Kim, and has appeared to revel in the idea that he could receive a Nobel Peace Prize. But the North has said it has no interest in a summit if the U.S. demands “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”

North Korea‘s deputy foreign minister, Kim Kye-gwan, warned on May 16 that North Korea might pull back from talks, noting that a setback would prove deeply damaging to Trump’s legacy.

“If President Trump follows in the footsteps of his predecessors, he will be recorded as a more tragic and unsuccessful president than his predecessors, far from his initial ambition to make unprecedented success,” the North Korean official said in a statement.

The remarks marked a return to a more combative posture toward the U.S. for North Korea, whose leader traded public taunts and threats of nuclear strikes with Trump prior to a thawing of relations earlier this year.

A senior administration official called it a “wise” decision for Trump “to walk away for time being,” noting that “the U.S. conceded nothing to the North Koreans” in negotiations.

Congressional Republicans voiced support for the president’s decision to scrap the summit. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Thursday that Trump was “right” to cancel the meeting, adding, “I trust his judgment going forward.”

I have decided to terminate the planned Summit in Singapore on June 12th. While many things can happen and a great opportunity lies ahead potentially, I believe that this is a tremendous setback for North Korea and indeed a setback for the world… pic.twitter.com/jT0GfxT0Lc — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2018

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement that “North Korea has long given ample reason to question its commitment to stability.”

“The U.S. must not relent in this maximum pressure campaign as we continue to work with our allies toward a peaceful resolution” on North Korea, Ryan added.

But Democratic lawmakers argued the cancellation signaled that the White House had failed to properly prepare for the summit.

“The art of diplomacy is a lot harder than the art of the deal,“ Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote on Twitter. “It‘s amazing to me that the administration is somehow shocked the North Koreans are acting as North Koreans act.“

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted in response to the development: “Many of us feared that the summit between @POTUS & Kim Jong-Un would be a great show that produced nothing enduring. If a summit is to be reconstituted, the US must show strength & achieve a concrete, verifiable, enduring elimination of Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear capabilities.“

The cancellation is also a blow to South Korea and Japan, two U.S. allies even more exposed to the North Korean threat than the United States.

Ahead of the summit, the two countries had been nudging the United States to ensure that any agreement with Kim takes into account their security concerns, which aren’t just about North Korea’s nuclear weapons but also its conventional military abilities.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in particular, had worked hard to engage Pyongyang and was especially supportive of a Trump-Kim summit. Yet the head of state appeared to be blindsided by Trump’s decision on Thursday.

“I am very perplexed, and it is very regrettable that the North Korea-U.S. summit will not be held on June 12 when it was scheduled to be held,“ Moon said at an emergency meeting with security officials, according to the Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency. The South Korean leader urged U.S. and North Korean officials to quickly restart talks.

The cancellation also drew scrutiny from other foreign officials, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying Thursday that he was "deeply concerned" by the withdrawal. He called on Trump and Kim "to find a path to the peaceful and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Victor Cha, who was Trump‘s pick to be U.S. ambassador to South Korea until his name was removed from consideration in January, told POLITICO that the summit's cancellation is a “very unfortunate outcome.“

“The question is — are we now more or less secure as a nation as a result of the cancellation of this summit?“ Cha said. “I think Trump saw too much uncertainty with a summit for there to be worth going forward, even with his own penchant for gut instincts and winging it.“

Matthew Nussbaum, Heather Caygle, Nahal Toosi, Louis Nelson and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.