North Korea says continued U.S. sanctions foster 'mistrust,' make denuclearization less likely

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

"Without any trust in the U.S. there will be no confidence in our national security and under such circumstances there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first," said North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho at the United Nations Saturday.

"The perception that sanctions can bring us on our knees is a pipe-dream of the people who are ignorant about us," he continued, reiterating a regular complaint from the Kim Jong Un regime. "But the problem is that the continued sanctions are deepening our mistrust" in the United States.

Ri argued Washington has not reciprocated goodwill gestures — like "stopping nuclear and ICBM tests, dismantling the nuclear test site in a transparent manner, and affirming not to transfer nuclear weapons and nuclear technology under any circumstances" — from Pyongyang. The Trump administration says sanctions will continue until denuclearization is complete.

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Read more here at The Week on what President Trump wants from North Korea, why "peace or war" may be a false dichotomy here, and what a plausible roadmap to peace might look like.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.