Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the Department of American Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, gave the following answer to a question raised by the KCNA on Thursday as regards the fact that Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of the State, is letting loose reckless remarks and sophism of all kinds against us every day:

In his historic policy speech at the First Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, Comrade Kim Jong Un , chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has clarified the principled stand on the DPRK-U.S. relations and settlement of the nuclear issue and said he would wait in patience till the end of this year to see whether the United States makes a courageous decision or not.

Everyone has a clear interpretation of his speech which says that the U.S. should change its way of calculation and come up with responsive measures before the end of this year. Just at this time, only Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of the State, is talking nonsense that its meaning is to finish the working level negotiation between the DPRK and the U.S. by the end of the year, which subjects him to public ridicule.

We cannot be aware of Pompeo’s ulterior motive behind his self-indulgence in reckless remarks; whether he is indeed unable to understand words properly or just pretending on purpose. However, it is a very dangerous situation if he really did not grasp the meaning.

If his behavior is intended, I think it is none other than silly calculation to be free from the constraint that the U.S. should make a move until the end of the year, misrepresenting the meaning of our requirement as the finalization of the working level negotiation by the end of the year by help of his talented skill of fabricating stories like a fiction writer.

As our Chairman of the State Affairs Commission has clarified, the U.S. cannot move us one iota by its current way of thinking.

In his previous visits to Pyongyang, Pompeo was granted audiences with our Chairman of the State Affairs Commission for several times and pleaded for the denuclearization. However, after sitting the other way round, he spouted reckless remarks hurting the dignity of our supreme leadership at Congress hearings last week to unveil his mean character by himself, thus stunning the reasonable people.

I would like to take this opportunity to make clear once again to Pompeo the meaning of the stand towards the U.S. clarified by our Comrade Chairman of the State Affairs Commission in his policy speech.

The meaning is that the U.S. should get rid of the root cause that pushed us into a nuclear state and obstacles on the way to denuclearization by its own hands; otherwise no one can predict how the situation on the Korean peninsula will turn out.

While Pompeo is fabricating stories after his own taste and trying to raise his publicity stunt at the sacrifice of the DPRK-U.S. relations as a whole, it is fortunate that the personal relationship between our Chairman of the State Affairs Commission and President Trump is on good terms as usual and our Chairman is pleased to get on well with President Trump.

Hanoi summit gives us a lesson that whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, the talks go wrong without any results even from the point close to success. I am afraid that, if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled.

Therefore, even in the case of possible resumption of the dialogue with the U.S., I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but other person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.