North Korea on Wednesday abruptly threatened to cancel the hotly anticipated summit between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump if Washington presses ahead with its demand that Pyongyang unilaterally relinquish its nuclear arsenal.
Citing a top nuclear negotiator, the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) served up a harsh criticism of the White House's recent language on ridding the country of its weapons of mass destruction — the first major sign of trouble amid warming ties.
If the Trump administration "is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit," First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said in the statement. DPRK is the acronym for the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.