SEOUL, June 25 (UPI) -- The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump remains committed to the "complete denuclearization" of North Korea, the State Department said Tuesday, days after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce made the comment during a press briefing in response to a question about whether the Iran airstrikes offered any lessons for Pyongyang.
"President Trump, in his first term, made significant outreach to North Korea," Bruce said. "They've got their own nuclear program in North Korea [and] we remain committed to the complete denuclearization of North Korea. That remains a commitment."
"If the North Korean nuclear issue can't be resolved through dialogue -- I'm not going to speculate on hypotheticals at this point," she added.
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In April, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed calls for Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear arsenal as "nonsensical" and a "daydream."
"The position of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as a nuclear weapons state ... is permanently fixed in its supreme and basic state law," she said, using the official name for North Korea.
In September 2022, the North passed a law declaring itself a nuclear weapons state and giving it the right to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike to protect itself. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the decision "irreversible" and later amended the country's constitution to enshrine the permanent growth of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal.
Recently elected South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has vowed to reopen communications channels with the North and speculation remains that Trump may look to revive nuclear negotiations with Kim.
During Trump's first term, the two leaders held a pair of high-profile summits and met briefly a third time at the DMZ. The diplomatic outreach failed to result in a nuclear deal, however, and Pyongyang has accelerated the development of its weapons programs in the intervening years.
In April, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that there has been communication with North Korea and that the two sides would "probably do something at some point."
"I have a very good relationship with [Kim]," Trump said. "I think it's very important. He's a big nuclear nation and he's a very smart guy."
On June 11, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump remains "receptive" to correspondence with Kim.
