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North Korea’s state-run Korea Central News Agency reported on Thursday that leader Kim Jong-un presided over a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, where responses to the US were discussed. (KCNA/Yonhap News)

North Korea announced Thursday that it planned to “reconsider trust-building measures,” signaling that it could resume testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles after previously declaring a moratorium in April 2018.

The Rodong Sinmun newspaper devoted its entire front page Thursday to a report on the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea presided over by leader Kim Jong-un Wednesday in Pyongyang.

During the meeting, Kim “gave an instruction to a sector concerned to reconsider on an overall scale the trust-building measures [toward the US] that we took on our own initiative on a preferential ground and to promptly examine the issue of restarting all temporarily-suspended activities.”

This amounted to a formal declaration that the North could end its moratorium on nuclear testing and ICBM test launches — a measure that has been referred to as a “red line” for relations with the US.

In the report, the Political Bureau was said to have “assess[ed] that the hostile policy and military threat by the US have reached a danger line that can not be overlooked any more despite our sincere efforts for maintaining the general tide for relaxation of tension in the Korean peninsula since the DPRK-US summit in Singapore.”

“It concluded to take a practical action to more reliably and effectively increase our physical strength for defending the dignity, sovereign rights and interests of our state,” the report continued.

When progress was being made on diplomacy between the two Koreas and the US in April 2018, Kim Jong-un decided to “discontinue nuclear test and inter-continental ballistic rocket test-fire” as of April 21 of that year.

The North Korean leader also promised the same moratorium on ICBM and nuclear testing at the summit with then-President Donald Trump held on June 12, 2018, in Singapore. However, the North’s Rodong Sinmun is now casting doubt on this promise.

North Korea is expressing strong distrust of the US. According to Rodong Sinmun’s coverage, the Politburo described the US as “recklessly faulting for no reason the DPRK’s legitimate exercise of sovereignty.” DPRK is an abbreviated form of the official name of North Korea.

The article went on to mention “hundreds of joint war drills,” the deployment of “nuclear strategic weapons into the region around the Korean peninsula,” and “over 20 independent sanctions measures” as examples of Washington’s “hostile policy towards the DPRK” listed at the meeting.

If Pyongyang does indeed choose to break its moratorium on nuclear weapons and ICBMs, it is possible a test could take place on Feb. 16 (Kim Jong-il’s birthday) or April 15 (Kim Il-sung’s birthday).

Meanwhile, the Blue House held a National Security Council meeting Thursday, where it committed to “continue efforts to stabilize the situation on the Korean Peninsula and resume dialogue with North Korea, while preparing for the possibility of further deterioration of the situation.”

The ruling and opposition parties had mixed reactions to the developments coming out of Pyongyang. Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung said that “North Korea must immediately stop actions that exacerbate the situation.”

The conservative People Power Party’s Yoon Suk-yeol, on the other hand, blamed Pyongyang’s change in attitude on the Blue House, saying that “the Moon Jae-in administration is largely responsible for the situation having gotten to this point.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer; Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

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