North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador accused the United States on Monday of turning the Korean Peninsula into "the world's biggest hotspot" and creating "a risky situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment".
"We will henceforth abandon our nuclear program and dismantle all existing nuclear facilities", read the official statement from North Korean President Kim Jong-un.
China has reiterated its call for North Korea to stop all tests, and has also called for a peaceful solution.
Throughout his bareknuckle election campaign, US President Donald Trump repeatedly called into question a mutual defense treaty between Japan and the United States, suggesting Tokyo should pay for its own security.
This was followed by National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster, who used familiar language Sunday to describe North Korea's "provocative and destabilizing and threatening behavior", while leaving all options on the table as his team helps develop plans of action for the region.
"I don't think Canada, no matter what we did or could do, would change the situation at all", he said.
The Trump administration is to review and reform the U.S. trade deal with South Korea, Mike Pence said on Tuesday, citing a widening bilateral trade deficit and obstacles for American businesses in the east Asian nation.
Pence said during a press conference in Seoul on April 17 that recent USA military action in Syria and Afghanistan had signaled the "strength and resolve of our new president". North Korea has taken "self-defensive" measures in response to USA threats of military action and these reflect Pyongyang's determination to "counter nukes and ICBM in kind", Kim said, referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles. "We hope to achieve this objective through peaceable means".
In response, Pyongyang's envoy to the United Nations, Kim In-ryong, said North Korea is ready to respond to "any mode of war" triggered by U.S. military action.
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He has accused opponents of receiving "millions of euros (from) certain foreign countries", without offering specifying charges. Cupic said it was unsafe and bad for democracy to host a prime minister who was competing for the presidency.
It also comes a day after the North attempted to test-fire a missile that exploded nearly immediately after launch.
The comments on what was once touted by Washington as the "gold standard" in trade pacts came as Mr Pence prepared to fly to Tokyo for the second leg of his four-nation Asian tour, where he is set to meet Japan's finance minister Taro Aso and discuss trade-boosting measures.
Pence arrived by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, a USA -led United Nations post just outside the DMZ, for a briefing with military leaders and to meet with US troops stationed there.
Warning North Korea that the United States had jettisoned its policy of "strategic patience" and that "all options were on the table", Pence fixed his steely glare on the isolated communist nation and began furiously staring it down.
He said rolling back the hostile USA policy toward the DPRK "is the precondition to solving all the problems in the Korean Peninsula". As the brown bomber jacket-clad vice president was briefed near the military demarcation line, two North Korean soldiers watched from a short distance away, one taking multiple photographs of the American visitor.
Speaking at the village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, Pence said America's relationship with South Korea was "ironclad and immutable".
"To some extent, we want to do for the United States what we did for IN", the White House adviser said.
Marius Grinius served as Canada's ambassador to both North and South Korea between 2005 and 2007.
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