Confrontation or dialogue? You choose, North Korea’s Kim tells US

South China Morning Post · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned that Pyongyang was ready for confrontation with the US but also left the door open for dialogue, depending on Washington’s stance.The prospects of North Korea-US relations hinge “entirely on the attitude of the United States”, he said on Wednesday. Pyongyang was prepared for both “peaceful coexistence or eternal confrontation” but the choice lay with Washington.As long as the US respected North Korea’s nuclear-armed state status, which is enshrined in its constitution, there was “no reason not to get along”, Kim said at the end of the Ninth Workers’ Party congress late on Wednesday.If Washington continued its confrontational approach, however, Pyongyang would respond “proportionally”, he said.It had “more than sufficient means and methods” to do so, he added, vowing to develop more powerful weapons including submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (centre) attends the first meeting of the Political Bureau of the Ninth Worker’s Party Central Committee in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Photo: KCNA/AFP“Further expanding and strengthening the national nuclear force and fully exercising our status as a nuclear weapons state is the unwavering will of our party”, he said.