The United States and North Korea have resumed negotiations on Saturday to dismantle the nuclear program of the Kim Jong-un regime. However, the first meeting after eight months had an abrupt outcome. After more than eight hours in Stockholm, the head of the North Korean delegation, Kim Myong-gil, has criticized that the US negotiators arrived "empty-handed" in the nuclear dialogue and said that "the negotiation has not complied with the expectations and it has broken, "according to the South Korean agency Yonhap. The US State Department has responded that Kim's comments were "premature" and that "they do not reflect the content or spirit of the discussion."
The versions after the meeting are contrasting. Washington has described the meeting as "positive," while Pyongyang has not hidden his discontent and criticized the attitude of US negotiators. A statement issued by the State Department indicates that the White House expects the dialogue to go beyond denuclearization; that he has reviewed what has happened since the last meeting in Singapore last June, and that he hopes to make new commitments on the issues that concern both countries. "The US and North Korea will not overcome their differences in a single Saturday," the document adds.
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The North Korean delegation arrived in the Swedish capital since last Thursday, a day after it was revealed that the Kim Jong-un government had successfully tested a new ballistic missile that reached the Exclusive Economic Zone of Japan. The launch bothered the Japanese Government and raised doubts about the negotiations on Saturday.
The last summit between representatives of both countries had been in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, at the end of February. The negotiations were a failure, concluded without agreement and without a road map to continue the dialogue. The crossing of accusations between the two governments, regarding a supposed demand from North Korea to lift the sanctions in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program, left the credibility of the negotiation process damaged. In June, US President Donald Trump briefly met with Kim in the demilitarized zone of the Korean peninsula and became the first president of that country to step on North Korean territory, which revived the hope that the dialogue would resume .
With the ghost of the fiasco in Vietnam, US negotiators have said they were willing to resume negotiations in two weeks. The North Koreans have not clarified whether they will appear once again. The goal of the new organizations, according to the US press, is to try new proposals in the face of the stalemate between the two countries, although the outcome of the talks still seems far away.
