After South Korea offered economic aid to North Korea in exchange for the country’s denuclearization, Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of dictator Kim Jong-un, said the South Korean president should stop talking nonsense and shut up. , ruling out any possibility of negotiations.
In a statement released by the state news agency KCNA on Friday, she says that Yoon Suk-yeol’s plan to provide food, energy and infrastructure to the country is the “the height of absurdity”, saying that the premise of that Pyongyang will negotiate about its nuclear program.
“It would have been more favorable to his image to shut up rather than talk nonsense, for he [Yoon] had nothing better to say,” Kim Yo-jong said. According to her, the offer to trade economic cooperation for nuclear weapons shows that the South Korean president is childish. “No one trades their fate for corn cake,” she added.
South Korea’s Unification Minister, responsible for relations with the neighboring country, called the comments by the dictator’s sister very disrespectful and indecent, but insisted the proposal still stands. “North Korea’s attitude in no way helps the peace and prosperity of the Korean peninsula, nor its own future. It only promotes isolation,” he said in a statement.
Kim Yo-jong has become a vocal critic of South Korea in recent years, being seen by some experts as representing the “bad cop”, considering his brother’s more moderate statements.
Friday’s statement marks the first time a senior Pyongyang official has directly commented on what Yoon Suk-yeol called an audacious plan to promote denuclearization. First proposed in May, the idea was recently discussed again during an interview that celebrated the president’s first 100 days in office.
Analysts had already anticipated the proposal’s reduced chances of success as North Korea invests much of its wealth in the military program and has repeatedly made clear that it will not accept such a deal.
Seoul’s economic plan, by the way, is similar to previous proposals, including those made during a meeting between Donald Trump – then US president – and Kim Jong-un.
“Yoon’s initiative adds to a long list of failed offers involving South Korean pledges to provide economic benefits to North Korea. These were the same assumptions that were behind a succession of failed efforts to initiate denuclearization talks.” , said Scott Snyder of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
For Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, Kim’s sister’s statements reaffirm that Pyongyang will never give up its nuclear weapons, adding that Seoul needs to review its approach. “The weight of the North Korean nuclear threat that South Korea has to live with has already exceeded the level it can handle,” she told AFP.
Ahead of his election in March, Yoon Suk-yeol insisted on tough positions against the regime in his northern neighbour, but on Wednesday, the president said his government will not seek to acquire nuclear deterrent capabilities.
In 2022, North Korea carried out a record number of weapons tests, including the launch of a full-range intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time since 2017. On Wednesday, Pyongyang fired two cruise missiles — a day after the US and South Korea carry out joint maneuvers in preparation for a major annual exercise, which Pyongyang considers an invasion drill.
Washington and Seoul have issued warnings that the Kim Jong-un regime is preparing the seventh nuclear test in its history.
