(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
On May 24, US President Donald Trump cancelled the Pyongyang-Washington summit, which was set to to take place in Singapore on June 12.
In a letter to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, the US President stated:
“I was very much looking forward to being there with you. 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 the long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote. “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.”
Earlier, North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son-hui described remarks by US Vice-President Mike Pence – who had said North Korea “may end like Libya” – as “ignorant and stupid”:
“At an interview with Fox News on May 21, U.S. Vice-President Pence made unbridled and impudent remarks that north Korea might end like Libya, military option for north Korea never came off the table, the U.S. needs complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, and so on.
As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president.”
On May 22, the Punggye-Ri nuclear test site of North Korea was dismantled, Sky News reported. A correspondent of the Sky News Tom Cheshire was one of a small group of journalists, allowed witnessing the dismantling of the site.
On May 16, North Korea threatened to call off the Pyongyang-Washington summit, stressing that the US envisage only unilateral denuclearization without guarantees.
