US’s Blinken tells North Korea: Diplomatic ball is in your court

US secretary of state says Washington will look for actions not words to resume stalled denuclearisation talks.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that North Korea needs to decide whether it wants to engage diplomatically to find ways to achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. Talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to surrender its nuclear weapons programme have stalled since the collapse of a third summit between President Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “I hope that North Korea will take the opportunity to engage diplomatically, and to see if there are ways to move forward toward the objective of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” Blinken said at a news conference in London on Monday.