North Korea suspends talks with South Korea

In a surprise move, North Korea canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time. Pyongyang said the joint US-South Korean military exercise called Max Thunder was a provocation and not in the spirit of warming North-South relations, and thus it had no other choice but to call off the talks.

The meeting was set up to work out steps for implementing a declaration agreed to during the North-South summit between the two countries on April 27. Issues addressed in the declaration include formally ending the Korean War and working toward the "complete denuclearization" of the peninsula.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported that Pyongyang is also threatening to cancel the much-publicized meeting between North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump scheduled to take place in Singapore, on June 12.

js/msh (AFP, Reuters)

Read more: From Little Rocket Man to denuclearization: A timeline of US-North Korea relations under Kim Jong Un

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