Heavy-handed tactics — in the form of new sanctions and increased pressure — seeking to force the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons program will fail, stated Pyongyang on Sunday, according to a Bloomberg report.
"The US should realize before it is too late that ‘maximum pressure' would not work against us," according to KCNA, adding that the Trump administration must "take a sincere approach to implementing the Singapore DPRK-US Joint Statement."
The KCNA statement cited a document released by a policy research director with Pyongyang's Institute for American Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"President Trump avails himself of every possible occasion to state his willingness to improve DPRK-US relations," noted the statement, while pointing out that US State Department representatives are "instead bent on bringing the DPRK-US relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire," cited by Bloomberg.com.
Taking the slow approach, Pyongyang has promoted a baby-steps policy "of resolving what is feasible one by one, by giving priority to confidence building," according to the Sunday KCNA statement, even as pundits and policy watchers avow the unlikelihood of DPRK denuclearization.
