US REJECTED North Korea peace talks offer before last nuclear test

Pyongyang rejects that. “For North Korea, winning a peace treaty is the center of the USA relationship”, said Go Myung-hyun, an expert on North Korea at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank.

A former security minister of North Korea has replaced the head of the North Korean military, who is presumed to have recently been executed, according to the North’s state media on Sunday. The official added that the two Asian countries should improve their defense ties in order to act in response to North Korea’s threats. “Our response to the NK proposal was consistent with our longstanding focus on denuclearization”.

Hours after North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying a satellite on February 7, the allies announced plans to begin talks on bringing THAAD into the peninsula. Beijing has warned that it would support a new United Nations Security Council resolution to make Pyongyang “pay the necessary price”.

“Recent events here have made South Korean people feel a little insecure, especially the rapid development of the North’s nuclear and missile programs, so the exercises are a welcome sign of Washington’s guarantee of the alliance”, Rah Jong-yil, the former head of South Korea’s intelligence service, told The Telegraph.

The talks, which the US says North Korea requested, ended after North Korea rejected a USA demand that denuclearization be a condition for the talks, Obama administration officials said.

Despite displaying increasing annoyance with North Korea’s decisions, it is more likely that China will continue to endure its neighbour’s provocations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, days before Pyongyang’s January 6 nuclear test, the Obama administration secretly agreed to discuss a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, in which a UN force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North from 1950 to 1953. Pyongyang’s primitive nuclear tests are not only exploited by the United States to justify a military presence but could also be used by Japan or South Korea as a pretext for developing their own nuclear weapons.

The US and ally South Korea regularly stage joint military exercises, but this is the first time it will stage a “pre-emptive strike” on North Korea. It is obvious why discussions between North Korea and the USA have not proceeded to serious negotiations.

Though the US has expressed doubt that a hydrogen bomb was indeed tested – with some officials instead characterizing the explosion as having perhaps contained components of such a weapon – the USA responded last week with a new round of sanctions against Pyongyang.

“China does not want the economic collapse of North Korea and the burden of bailing out a collapsed North. Also, a unified Korea may not be in China’s strategic interest”, he said.

“No issue in which the countries concerned, including the US, are interested can be settled unless a peace treaty is concluded before anything else”, the statement said.