Kim Jong-un accuses the US of stoking tension and warns of nuclear war

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un accused the United States of increasing tension and provocations, saying the Korean peninsula has never faced a greater risk of nuclear war, state media KCNA reported on Friday.

The comments came amid international criticism over increasingly close military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, and claims that North Korea sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine.

Previous negotiations with Washington have only highlighted its “aggressive and hostile” policy toward North Korea, Kim said in a speech at a military exhibition in the capital, according to KCNA.

“Never before have the warring parties on the Korean Peninsula clashed in such a dangerous and acute manner that could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war,” he said Thursday.

“We have already gone as far as we can in negotiating with the United States,” he said, adding that the talks had only shown that its aggressive and hostile policy toward North Korea could never change.

North Korean state media has not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Donald Trump, who held three unprecedented meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore, Hanoi and on the border with Korea, in 2018 and 2019.

But their diplomacy failed to yield concrete results because of the gap between U.S. calls for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and Kim’s demands for sanctions relief.

Trump has long touted his ties with Kim and last month said that both countries would have had “a nuclear war with millions of deaths,” but that he had avoided it, thanks to his ties with the North’s leader.

Hong Min, a researcher at the Korean Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said Kim could be trying to underscore the North’s nuclear capabilities ahead of Trump’s second term, while leaving the door open for diplomacy.

“He could be suggesting Trump show his ‘willingness to coexist’ before reopening any talks and calling for a change in the US’s hostile attitude,” Hong said.

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