Kim Kye Gwan, advisor of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, issued the following statement on January 11:

From the outset of this year, the south Korean authorities are becoming too busy, talking about an urgent delivery of the US President's birthday greetings to the Chairman of our State Affairs Commission.

They said in an extremely urgent notice that the US President met a person concerned of the Blue House on a visit to Washington and asked him to surely convey the birthday greetings to our Chairman. But they seem not to know that there is a special liaison channel between the top leaders of the DPRK and the US.

The US President’s birthday greetings urgently noticed by the excited south Korean authorities is what we have already got through his personal letter.

South Korea, not a member of the US clan, went so frivolous as to convey the greetings from the US President. It seems that it still has a lingering hope to play the role of "mediator" in the DPRK-US relations.

To forge personal relations between heads of state is a diplomatically natural thing between states. However, it is somehow presumptuous for south Korea to meddle in the personal relations between Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission and President Trump.

As is acknowledged by the world, it is true that the personal relations between our Chairman of the State Affairs Commission and President Trump are not bad.

But, it is absentminded to expect that we may return to the dialogue with the US by taking advantage of such relations or strive hard to create an atmosphere to this end.

We have been deceived by the US, being caught in the negotiating table with it for over one year and a half, and lost time.

Even though Chairman Kim Jong Un has good personal feelings about President Trump, they are, in the true sense of the word, "personal". The Chairman of the State Affairs Commission would not discuss the state affairs on the basis of such personal feelings, as he represents our state and its interests.

What is clear is that we will never lose our time again, being taken in by the US trick as in the past.

There will never be such a negotiation as that in Vietnam, in which we proposed exchanging a core nuclear facility of the country for the lift of some UN sanctions in a bid to lessen the sufferings of the peaceable people even a bit.

There is no need for us to return to such talks in which there is only unilateral pressure, and we have no desire to barter something for other thing as traders do at the negotiating table.

It can be said that the reopening of dialogue between the DPRK and the US may be possible only under the condition of the latter's absolute agreement on the issues raised by the former, but we know well that the US is neither ready nor able to do so.

We know well about the way we should go and will go on our way.

Under these circumstances, the south Korean authorities had better not dream a fabulous dream that we would return to the dialogue with thankful feelings for the birthday greetings like someone. They are well advised to behave prudently, if they are not to be reduced to a fool heading nowhere.