After months of escalating tensions that prompted many to worry that the United States may be on the road to nuclear war, relations with North Korea saw rapid improvement following North Korea’s involvement in the recent Olympics held in nearby South Korea. As relations between the two Koreas began to warm, official talks with U.S. representatives commenced, including the first direct discussions between the U.S. president and North Korean leader.

It seemed that President Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and even more aggressive economic sanctions may have finally forced North Korea’s Supreme Leader into submission. However, after decades of using the United States in official propaganda as the looming threat on the horizon, and the reason for North Korean’s generally low standard of living, it was to be expected that Kim would not allow himself to be seen as anything but a diplomatic peer. Any perception within North Korea of Kim bowing before Trump’s superior financial or military might would weaken Kim’s standing among his people. Kim, then, is in a difficult position for a dictator: he must negotiate his way out of economic ruin before seeds of dissent begin to germinate within his nation’s populous, but he must present the image of a powerful man with nothing to lose when dealing directly with the United States. The result has been a schizophrenic foreign policy out of North Korea, with doting official statements directed at President Trump bookended by reports of continuing progress on Kim’s nuclear weapons program and, of course, a continuation of the nation’s state-run media outlet’s method of portraying the United States as the wolf at the door.

This balancing act within the North Korean regime has most recently led to Donald Trump canceling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s upcoming trip to meet with Kim. Soon after North Korea received word that their meeting had been canceled, a story was released in North Korea’s state-owned Rodong Sinmun newspaper that suggests the United States is secretly preparing to invade. The piece claims South Korean radio stations reported on a new series of drills that involve U.S. Special Operations troops and the nuclear submarine USS Michigan aimed at “the infiltration into Pyongyang” in case their recent negotiations don’t progress.

Such acts prove that the U.S. is hatching a criminal plot to unleash a war against the DPRK and commit a crime which deserves merciless divine punishment in case the U.S. fails in the scenario of the DPRK’s unjust and brigandish ‘denuclearization first.’

We can not but take a serious note of the double-dealing attitudes of the U.S. as it is busy staging secret drills involving man-killing special units while having a dialogue with a smile on its face.

The U.S. would be sadly mistaken if it thinks that it can browbeat someone through trite “gunboat diplomacy” which it used to employ as an almighty weapon in the past and attain its sinister intention.

The U.S. should ponder over its deeds.

While NEWSREP was unable to confirm whether or not any such reports were made over South Korean airwaves, there seems little evidence to suggest any validity to these claims. The United States has put a halt to military exercises on the Korean peninsula in the pursuit of a more receptive environment for discussions. It would seem, then, that these claims are meant to remind the North Korean people that they need their leader, Kim Jong Un, to get them out of danger, while simultaneously ensuring a failure in discussions would be seen as a result of American bullying, rather than Kim’s unwillingness to fall within international norms.

By continuing to portray the United States as the most pressing threat to North Korean welfare, Kim can avoid his citizenry becoming cognizant of the threat his own behavior poses to their well being. The United States, it would seem, could be Kim’s political savior if he can manage to negotiate a reduction in sanctions… but only if he can do so without appearing too weak in front of his people.

This tightrope may still lead to peace, but its intricacies could mean dragging progress out for years.