Nuclear security

Media Silence: North Korea Has Repeatedly Offered to Give up Their Nukes

...Prominent media outlets such as the Washington Post continue to tell a different story, namely that:

“[North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un] has shown no interest in talks — he won’t even set foot in China, his biggest patron. Even if negotiations took place, the current regime has made clear that ‘it will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table, as one envoy recently put it.”

As the Intercept explains, this is a false assertion:

“There’s of course a significant difference between North Korea saying it will never negotiate to halt or eliminate its nuclear weapons program, and that it will never negotiate as long as the U.S. continues to threaten it…The reality is that North Korea is saying that, under certain conditions, it will put its nuclear weapons on the table.” [emphasis added]

Not only does the media continue to misinform the public on this issue, but as Noam Chomsky explained in an interview with Democracy! Now, the United States continues to categorically reject North Korea’s proposal:

“There is one proposal that’s ignored. You see a mention of it now and then. It’s a pretty simple proposal. Remember the goal is to get North Korea to freeze its weapons systems – weapons and missile systems. One proposal is to accept their offer to do that. Sounds simple, they’ve made a proposal – China and North Korea – proposed to freeze the North Korean missile and nuclear weapons systems and the U.S. instantly rejected it. And you can’t blame that on Trump, Obama did the same thing, a couple of years ago. Same offer was presented – I think it was 2015 – the Obama administration instantly rejected it.”