North Korea warned US President Donald Trump not to use his personal rapport with leader Kim Jong-un for “selfish purposes,” saying Kim had not sent the “nice note” Trump claimed to have received.

“The relations between the leaders of both countries are not to be taken up just for diversion or be misused for selfish purposes,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said on late Sunday in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

The message came less than a day after Trump told a press briefing he had received from Kim “a nice note” recently. He said he and Kim were “doing fine,” without elaborating.

He added that the US and North Korea would have gone to war had he not been elected and championed the bilateral denuclearization talks now in limbo.

“He could have been referring to the personal letters exchanged in the past, we are not sure. But there was no letter addressed recently to Trump by the supreme leadership of the DPRK,” the North said. DPRK stands for the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

It added that it would examine why the US was feeding a groundless story to the media and warned that the two leaders’ relations should not be taken lightly.

Since 2018, Kim and Trump have met on three occasions to discuss Pyongyang’s denuclearization -- separately in Singapore and Hanoi, and briefly at Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border with President Moon Jae-in in attendance.

But nuclear diplomacy has made little headway since October 2019, when the two countries failed to work out their differences over what steps to prioritize in the process of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

Pyongyang demands sweeping sanctions relief first, but Washington insists on scrapping the nuclear programs instead, with neither side seen willing to compromise.

In late March, Trump sent Kim a letter seeking to expand cooperation with North Korea to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s younger sister and a senior party official, said the letter was proof of the “exceptional rapport” between the two leaders.

By Choi Si-young (siyoungchoi@heraldcorp.com)