Reuters
Seoul, Jan 4: The head of US forces in South Korea warned Thursday against raising hopes over North Korea’s peace overture amid a war of words between the United States and the reclusive North over its nuclear and missile programmes.
In a New Year address, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he was open to dialogue with US ally South Korea and could send a delegation to the Winter Olympics to be held in the South in February.
Kim also warned that he would push ahead with “mass producing” nuclear warheads, pursuing a weapons programme in defiance of UN Security Council sanctions. In response, Seoul Tuesday proposed high-level talks at a border village and Wednesday, the two Koreas reopened a border hotline that had been closed since February 2016.
“We must keep our expectations at the appropriate level,” the chief of United States Forces Korea (USFK), Vincent Brooks, was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying in an address to a university in Seoul. US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have exchanged a series of bellicose comments in recent months, raising alarm across the world, with Trump dismissing the prospect of a diplomatic solution to a crisis in which North Korea has threatened to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea. Trump has mocked Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and again ridiculed him on Twitter this week, raising some eyebrows
at home.
Meanwhile, the White House has questioned the mental health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after his repeated threats to the US that he has “nuclear button on his desk.” “I think the President and the people of this country should be concerned about the mental fitness of the leader of North Korea. He’s made repeated threats. He’s tested missiles time and time again for years,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference.
