North Korea has cancelled Wednesday’s high-level talks with South Korea because of anger over its joint military exercises with the US.
The North’s official KCNA news agency said the exercises were a “provocation” and a rehearsal for an invasion.
It also warned the US over the fate of the historic summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump that is scheduled for 12 June in Singapore.
In March, Mr Trump stunned the world by accepting an invitation to meet Mr Kim.
“We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” the US leader later tweeted.
The US state department said it was continuing to prepare for the Trump-Kim summit and that it was not aware of any changes in the North Korean position.
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What exactly has North Korea cancelled?
In short, the scheduled talks with South Korea were a follow-up to a rare summit that was held on 27 April.
They were agreed earlier this week and were set to take place at Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarised zone between the two countries that is often referred to as the “truce town”.
Representatives had planned to discuss further details of the agreements they had made at the historic summit.
This covers things like ridding the peninsula of nuclear weapons and turning the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty.