The spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea issued the following statement on Sunday:

The DPRK and the U.S. held working-level negotiations in Stockholm, Sweden on October 5 after the preliminary contact on October 4 under an agreement between the two sides.

We approached the negotiations with expectations and optimism that the U.S. side would think and act in a proper way as it had persistently requested for the opening of the negotiations by sending repeated signals that it was ready for dialogue based on “a new method” and “creative solution”.

However, the trite stance shown by the delegates of the U.S. side at the negotiations venue made us feel that our expectations were no better than an empty hope and rather increased a doubt as to whether the U.S. truly has a stand to solve the issue through dialogue.

At the negotiations, the U.S. side maintained its former stand, seemingly showing that it has brought no new package, but repeated equivocal insistence that consecutive and intensive negotiations are necessary, yet not presenting any signs of calculation and guarantee.

The U.S. has actually not made any preparations for the negotiations but sought to meet its political goal of abusing the DPRK-U.S. dialogue for its domestic political events on schedule.

So, the delegate of the DPRK side to the negotiations opened a press conference and clarified our principled stand on the negotiations.

However, the U.S. is misleading the public opinion, insisting that the press conference given by the delegation of the DPRK fell short of accurately reflecting the contents and the spirit of the negotiations and that they had wonderful discussion with the DPRK side.

The greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment.

The recent negotiations have left us skeptical about the U.S. political will to improve the DPRK-U.S. relations and made us think if it isn’t its real intention to abuse the bilateral relations for gratifying its party interests.

The U.S. is spreading a completely ungrounded story that both sides are open to meet after two weeks but as it has conceived nothing even after the passage of 99 days since the Panmunjom summit, it is not likely at all that it can produce a proposal commensurate to the expectations of the DPRK and to the concerns of the world in just fortnight.

We have no intention to hold such sickening negotiations as what happened this time before the U.S. takes a substantial step to make complete and irreversible withdrawal of the hostile policy toward the DPRK, a policy that threatens the security of the country and hampers the rights to existence and development of its people.

We have already made it clear that if the U.S. again fingers at the old scenario which has nothing to do with new calculation method, the dealings between the DPRK and the U.S. may immediately come to an end.

As we have clearly identified the way for solving problem, the fate of the future DPRK-U.S. dialogue depends on the U.S. attitude, and the end of this year is its deadline.