Source: BBC<\/p>\n
North Korea has cancelled Wednesday’s high-level talks with South Korea because of anger over its joint military exercises with the US.<\/p>\n
The North’s official KCNA news agency said the exercises were a “provocation” and a rehearsal for an invasion.<\/p>\n
It also warned the US over the fate of the historic summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump that is scheduled for 12 June in Singapore.<\/p>\n
In March, Mr Trump stunned the world by accepting an invitation to meet Mr Kim.<\/p>\n
“We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” the US leader later tweeted.<\/p>\n
The US state department said it was continuing to prepare for the Trump-Kim summit and that it was not aware of any changes in the North Korean position.<\/p>\n
In short, the scheduled talks with South Korea were a follow-up to a rare summit that was held on 27 April.<\/p>\n
They were agreed earlier this week and were set to take place at Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarised zone between the two countries that is often referred to as the “truce town”.<\/p>\n
Representatives had planned to discuss further details of the agreements they had made at the historic summit.<\/p>\n
This covers things like ridding the peninsula of nuclear weapons and turning the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty.<\/p>\n
Other points the leaders agreed in a joint statement were:<\/p>\n
Joint military drills between the US and South Korea have often angered the North.<\/p>\n
In the past, they have threatened an “all-out offensive” in response to the exercises and condemned them as pouring “gasoline on fire”.<\/p>\n
The latest drills – known as Max Thunder – involve some 100 warplanes, including an unspecified number of B-52 bombers and F-15K jets.<\/p>\n
The North has described them as a “provocation” and preparation for a future invasion, which is something they have said before.<\/p>\n
But the US and South Korea have always insisted the drills are purely for defence purposes, and based out of a mutual defence agreement they signed in 1953.<\/p>\n
They also say the exercises are necessary to strengthen their readiness in case of an external attack.<\/p>\n
It depends who you ask.<\/p>\n
North Korea fired a warning shot at the US when it announced it was cancelling Wednesday’s talks with the South.<\/p>\n
“The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities,” the KCNA report said.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s South Korea correspondent Laura Bicker says the wording of the statement showed\u00a0North Korea was casting doubt over talks, rather than saying they were about to be cancelled.<\/a><\/p>\n But the US was quick to resist any suggestion that the summit was now in doubt.<\/p>\n “We will continue to plan the meeting,” a state department spokeswoman told reporters soon after the news of the cancelled talks broke.<\/p>\n She added that the US had received “no notification” of a change in the North’s position.<\/p>\n Source: BBC North Korea has cancelled Wednesday’s high-level talks with South Korea because of anger over its joint military exercises with the US. The North’s official KCNA news agency said the exercises were a “provocation” and a rehearsal for an invasion. It also warned the US over the fate of the historic summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1634,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions\/1634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}