North Korea Kills Rumors of Another Trump-Kim Jong Un Summit

North Korea has again dismissed any suggestion that leader Kim Jong Un may meet with President Donald Trump before the November presidential election.

Rumors have been swirling that the U.S. is trying to facilitate a fourth meeting between the two leaders before the president faces off with former Vice President Joe Biden. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is reportedly hopeful of another summit, but Pyongyang apparently remains skeptical.

Kwon Jong Gun, the director general of the Department of U.S. Affairs at the North's Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that Pyongyang has no interest in more talks with the U.S., complaining that all meetings and negotiations to date have produced little progress on denuclearization and sanctions relief.

"Explicitly speaking once again, we have no intention to sit face to face with U.S.," Kwon said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Kwon referred to remarks made by First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui this weekend, in which she said the North does not "feel any need to sit face to face with the U.S." because American leaders see talks with Kim's regime "as nothing more than a tool for grappling its political crisis."

Choe added that the Trump administration would be wrong if it thought "negotiations would still work on us," and claimed Pyongyang has "worked out [a] detailed strategic timetable for putting under control the long-term threat from the U.S."

Both Choe and Kwon were dismissive of former national security adviser John Bolton—long a favored target of criticism in North Korea due to his hawkish foreign policy outlook—who also suggested that another Trump-Kim meeting could be on the cards if the president thinks it might boost his election prospects.

Bolton—currently doing the media rounds to promote his new book The Room Where It Happened—has said that Trump might deliver an "October surprise" ahead of the November poll.

Kwon dismissed Bolton as a "meddlesome man" while Choe said the former Trump aide "thoughtlessly voices an intention to mediate the summit, utterly regardless of what we, the dialogue party, would think of it."

Kwon also criticized Moon for his apparent efforts to facilitate another meeting, framing the offer as "nonsensical" and symptomatic of Seoul's "bad habit" of meddling in Northern affairs. "Inter-Korean relations are bound to go further bankrupt as they only talk nonsense," he added.

Trump and Kim have met three times but have so far been unable to reach a deal on denuclearization and sanctions relief. The president has been criticized for the lack of progress and for handing Kim invaluable propaganda victories by meeting with him so publicly. Trump even met the young dictator at the Demilitarized Zone border and stepped onto Northern territory.

U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun will visit South Korea this week—his first trip to the South since December.

Biegun said last week that another Trump-Kim summit was "probably unlikely" before the election, though said the administration remains ready for "engagement between the two sides."

Frustrated with a lack of success, the North has returned to characteristically belligerent rhetoric and regular weapon testing, though has so far maintained its moratorium on nuclear warhead tests and ballistic missile launches.

Kim ratcheted up tensions last month by blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Kaesong. Pyongyang said the demolition was retaliation for propaganda balloons floated into the North by defector groups in the South.

The regime said Moon had not done enough to stop the balloons, although his government has committed to making such launches illegal.