US President Barack Obama said Friday that Washington was prepared to “engage” with North Korea, but warned that Pyongyang must first give up its nuclear weapons.
Standing alongside South Korean President Park Geun-Hye at the White House, Obama told a press conference that the US alliance with close ally Seoul was “a lynchpin of peace and security” for the Korean peninsula and the region.
“Kim Jong-Un’s missile program achieved nothing except to deepen North Korea’s isolation,” said Obama, referring to the North Korean leader.
“Today, President Park and I are reaffirming our nations will never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.”
Obama said that while he was ready to “engage nations with which we have had troubled histories,” he added that “Kim needs to understand it (North Korea) will not achieve the economic development it seeks so long as it looks at nuclear weapons.”
“At the point where Kim Jong-Un says we are interested in seeing relations and denuclearization, I think it’s fair to say we will be right there at the table,” he added.
The US president also said that he “welcomed” Park’s Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative — a forum that would include North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and Mongolia.
The initiative is seen by Seoul as a way to bolster regional cooperation and keep much-constricted diplomatic channels open with its bellicose nuclear-armed neighbor in Pyongyang.
North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests and threatened a fourth as part of a weapons and missile program that it has pursued through a barrage of international sanctions.
The secretive country has long claimed it has technology capable of launching nuclear bombs at its distant enemies, but experts are skeptical whether it has acquired the sophisticated expertise needed to produce such weapons.
Park said that North Korea and its young leader needed to display “genuine willingness” to give up its nuclear program.
“North Korea has to come to its own conclusion that it is genuinely willing to give up nuclear capabilities and become a full-fledged member of international society,” she added.