The recent nuclear deal with Iran showed that the US can be flexible with a willing counterpart, including North Korea if it decides it wants talks on its nuclear programme, a US envoy said on Monday.

Also on Monday, North Korea marked the anniversary of the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean war more than six decades ago. Officials used the occasion to warn that another war on the Korean peninsula would leave no Americans alive to sign a surrender document.

Pyongyang and other cities were decked out with flags and banners as patriotic gatherings and mass dance celebrations marked the 27 July 1953 agreement that brought the three-year war to an end with an armistice, not a peace treaty.



In a speech to veterans on Saturday, leader Kim Jong-un said “gone forever is the era when the United States blackmailed us with nukes” and added that his nuclear-armed country was now “the very source of fear” for the US.

North Korea has said it is not interested in an Iran-like dialogue to give up its nuclear capabilities, which it has called an “essential deterrence” against hostile US policy.

Despite that, Sydney Seiler, US special envoy for now-defunct six-party talks on ending the North’s nuclear programme, said the US left the door open to talks with the North when it is willing to end its diplomatic isolation.

“The Iran deal demonstrates the value and possibilities that negotiation bring,” Seiler told reporters in the South Korean capital, Seoul. “It demonstrates again our willingness, when we have a willing counterpart, and it demonstrates our flexibility when the DPRK makes a decision that it wants to take a different path.”

Seiler is on a trip to the region that will include stops in China and Japan, is the latest in a series of visits by US nuclear envoys aimed at trying to jump start the North Korean talks which broke down in 2008. North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests, the last in February 2013, and now calls itself a nuclear weapons state.

The US and five world powers struck a historic deal with Iran this month that will limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting US, European Union and United Nations sanctions that have crippled its economy. North Korea is also heavily sanctioned by the US, EU and UN for procuring equipment related to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

News reports said the North has recently upgraded a missile platform and may be readying to launch a long-range missile around the time of a national anniversary in October.

On Monday, officials took the opportunity of the armistice anniversary to step up their anti-US rhetoric and call upon the nation to redouble its devotion to the third leader in the Kim dynasty, and prepare for a final showdown with Washington.



The anniversary is hailed in North Korea as a victory over the US, which fought with the South Koreans and UN allies against the North’s forces, who were supported by China and the Soviet Union.

In his speech to veterans, Kim stressed the importance of instilling the country’s young people with the same fighting spirit and devotion as the generation that experienced the war. But he also stressed that North Korea has a new ace in the hole a nuclear arsenal of its own.

At a separate gathering held on Sunday, Korean People’s Army general Pak Yong Sik, who is believed to be the country’s new defense minister, said that if the US did not abandon its hostile policies toward Pyongyang and provoked another war, the North was prepared to fight until “there would be no one left to sign a surrender document”.

“It is more than 60 years since the ceasefire on [the] land, but peace has not yet settled on it,” he told the meeting, which included high-level officials, veterans and diplomats stationed in Pyongyang.

“The past Korean war brought about the beginning of the downhill turn for the US, but the second Korean war will bring the final ruin to US imperialism.”