If Hankyroreh, a South Korean newspaper, can interview Han Song-ryol, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations in New York, well, so can anyone. It would be nice for once for the New York Times or the Washington Post to get the DPRK’s views into a story. An excerpt:
“It is a question of whether the United States has the will to coexist with us, whether it has a desire to resolve issues through negotiation, or whether it is going to unilaterally force us to give up our nuclear programs. The joint statement issued in Beijing on September 19 of last year contains two things. One is that we discard our nuclear weapons programs. The other is that the U.S. is to discard its antagonist policy towards [North] Korea and move towards normalizing relations. However, as soon as that joint statement was announced, the U.S. went about enacting financial sanctions. It thinks it can make us come out with our hands up if pressured, but that is a mistake.”
