IN BRIEF (Page 9)

DPRK

Hopes of dialogue with US 'narrowing'

Prospects for dialogue between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United States are increasingly narrowing, the DPRK's Foreign Ministry warned on Tuesday. The US State Department found fault with the DPRK in the 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism released on Friday, said a spokesperson for the DPRK Foreign Ministry in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The US has persistently tried to brand the DPRK as a "state sponsor of terrorism" at a sensitive time when the DPRK-US dialogue is at a stalemate. This is an insult to and perfidy against the DPRK, the spokesperson said. The working-level negotiations between the two countries in Stockholm ended in a stalemate in October. There is no sign of a resumption of a new round of talks about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.