The regime change and assassination model

North Korea said on Thursday that it would have second thoughts about a summit meeting between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Trump if American officials continued to make what the North considers threats against its leadership.

The North Korean official who issued the warning singled out Vice President Mike Pence for remarks that she called “ignorant and stupid.” In an interview broadcast on Monday on Fox News, Mr. Pence warned that North Korea’s government could end up like that of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan leader.

Mr. Qaddafi gave up his nascent nuclear program in the apparent hopes of staving off Western intervention and sanctions, and of negotiating economic integration with the West. But little of that happened, and years later he was killed by rebels after he was weakened in a military action against Libya by the United States and its European allies.

In a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, the North Korean official, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, referred to “unlawful and outrageous acts” by top American officials and said that Mr. Pence had made “unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya.”

Ms. Choe’s comment was the second time in a week that North Korea has threatened to withdraw from Mr. Kim’s planned summit meeting with Mr. Trump, which is slated for June 12 in Singapore.

“As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice president,” Ms. Choe said. “In case the U.S. offends against our good will and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the D.P.R.K.-U.S. summit.”
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Mr. Bolton has repeatedly referred to the so-called Libyan model. Mr. Trump last week disavowed Mr. Bolton’s remarks, but never referred to Libya’s voluntary disarmament in 2003. Instead, he discussed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s demise at the hands of his own people less than a decade later in the upheavals that swept the Arab world, and suggested that if there was ultimately no agreement over the North’s nuclear program, its leaders could meet a similar fate.

Mr. Trump also opened the door on Tuesday to a phased dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, backing away from his previous demand that Mr. Kim completely abandon his arsenal without any reciprocal American concessions.

In her statement on Thursday, Ms. Choe accused Mr. Pence, another North Korea hard-liner in the Trump administration, of promoting a “military option” on North Korea and also pushing for a quick and unilateral nuclear disarmament of the country.

In his interview on Monday, Mr. Pence said, “You know, as the president made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.”

When it was noted that the comparison could be interpreted as a threat, Mr. Pence replied, “Well, I think it’s more of a fact.”