The suspensions went into immediate effect on Saturday, according to state-run KCNA news agency.<\/p>\n
The US president greeted the news in a tweet. \u201cThis is very good news for North Korea and the World \u2013 big progress!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
The news comes less than a week before Kim meets the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, for a summit in the demilitarized zone that divides the peninsula.<\/p>\n
It goes a long way towards meeting US demands for denuclearisation, as Pyongyang and Washington work to agree on when and where Kim will meet Trump for historic talks that barely seemed possible just a few months ago.<\/p>\n
The decision to suspend nuclear tests and missile launches came at a plenary meeting of the ruling party\u2019s central committee, which had convened on Friday to discuss a \u201cnew stage\u201d of policies \u2013 prompting speculation that the regime would move towards denuclearisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the weaponisation of nuclear weapons has been verified, it is not necessary for us to conduct any more nuclear tests or test launches of mid- and long-range missiles or ICBMs,\u201d Kim told the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe northern nuclear test site has completed its mission,\u201d he added at the meeting, according to KCNA.<\/p>\n
North Korea has conducted all six of its nuclear tests at the same Punggye-ri test site in the country\u2019s north-east. It tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, while its last \u2013 and most powerful \u2013 test came last September.<\/p>\n
Those tests, plus a string of missile launches ordered by Kim over the past year, at one point appeared to be taking the peninsula to the brink of conflict.<\/p>\n
The North\u2019s quest to develop a deterrent against what it has long described as US hostility resulted in an extraordinary exchange of insults between Kim and Trump, and frequent warnings from Washington that it would not rule out military action to end Kim\u2019s nuclear ambitions.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s announcement came the day after a hotline between Kim and the South Korean president went live. <\/p>\n
The hotline connects Moon\u2019s desk at the presidential Blue House with North Korea\u2019s state affairs commission, which is headed by Kim, Yonhap news agency said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week Moon, a liberal whose election in May raised hopes of a detente on the Korean peninsula, said that Pyongyang had expressed a desire for the \u201ccomplete denuclearisation\u201d of the Korean peninsula without attaching preconditions such as the withdrawal of US troops.<\/p>\n
The two countries are due to hold a summit next Friday on the southern side of the demilitarised zone.<\/p>\n
The meeting is to be followed in May or June by a meeting between Kim and Trump. The US president on Wednesday pledged to meet Kim \u201cin the coming weeks\u201d but said he was prepared to walk away if the talks were not fruitful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea has said it will end its tests of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and shut down its nuclear test site, in a dramatic development ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[300],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-37346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-agencies"],"bylines":[{"id":300,"name":"Agencies","slug":"agencies","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":300,"name":"Agencies","slug":"agencies","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37346"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=37346"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=37346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}