NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
President Trump and Kim Jong Un are supposed to sit down for a historic summit in Singapore on June 12.
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North Korea is getting cold feet.
The isolation nation pledged to back out of a highly-anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Trump if economic aid is contingent on abandoning its budding nuclear program.
The unsurprising reversal comes as the Kim regime took exception to ongoing U.S. military drills on the Korean peninsula and nixed away from high-level talks with South Korean officials slated for Wednesday.
In a lengthy manifesto, the North's vice minister of Foreign Affairs taunted Trump for botching peace talks like U.S. leaders before him.
"If President Trump follows in the footsteps of his predecessors, he will be recorded as more tragic and unsuccessful president than his predecessors, far from his initial ambition to make unprecedented success," according to an English translation of Kim Kye Gwan's statement.
The letter, released through the state-run Korean Central News Agency, also targeted National Security Advisor John Bolton for suggesting North Korea dismantle its arsenal like Libya, which destroyed its rudimentary nuclear program in the 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief.
"It is absolutely absurd to dare compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya which had been at the initial state of nuclear development," the statement continued. "We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance toward him."
The country earlier blasted joint military exercises between the U.S. and the South as unnecessarily "provocative" amid otherwise warming ties.
U.S. and South Korea started a two-week air combat drill called "Max Thunder" on Friday, featuring stealth fighters and B-52 bombers, KCNA said.
President Trump delivers remarks at the 37th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol Building on Tuesday. (Pool/Getty Images)
The U.S. will "have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities," the agency added.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon declined to address the summit threat, but said the military drills are nothing out of the ordinary.
"The defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed," Col. Rob Manning told the Daily News.
Trump and Kim are supposed to sit down for the historic summit on June 12.
"We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace," Trump tweeted last week.
Trump has vacillated between expressing excitement about the summit and questioning whether it will happen at all.
Trump would become the first American President to ever sit down with a North Korean leader if the summit takes place as planned.
Trump and Kim are supposed to sit down for a historic summit in Singapore on June 12. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Tuesday's threat comes amid otherwise improving diplomacy between the North and the South.
Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-In at the Korean border last month. The two leaders were all smiles as they shook hands across the border demarcation and pledged to work toward total denuclearization.
U.S. intelligence agencies have detected signs that the North has started dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
But some experts have called for caution, stressing that the North Korean regime has abruptly walked away from promises in the past.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration will approach diplomatic talks with "respect to the fact that the North Koreans have not proved worthy of their promises."
"But we're hopeful that this will be different, that we don't do the traditional model, where they do something, and we give them a bunch of money, and then both sides walk away," Pompeo said on Fox News Sunday.
North Korea's summit threat comes a week after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.
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