South Korea remains “the enemy” of North Korea despite recent moves by Seoul to ease tensions along the 38th parallel, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in state media Monday.
North Korea has “no interest” in talks with the South no matter what proposal is offered, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Kim’s comments mark North Korea’s first official response since the new South Korean government took office on June 4 following months of political turmoil over the disgraced former leader Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration in December.
Yoon said the martial law declaration, which the National Assembly rescinded after six hours, was necessary to fight North Korean influence among opponents to his leadership in the South Korean government.
Conciliatory overtures made since President Lee Jae Myung’s election hadn’t erased how South Korea’s military alliance with the United States had “stained” the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, she added.
The new South Korean president’s reaffirmation of the US alliance shows there is no chance for improved North-South relations, the statement said.
Kim said the new Lee administration would be little different from Yoon’s government, describing what she called its “blind trust” in Seoul’s alliance with Washington.
“There can be no change in our state’s understanding of the enemy, and they cannot turn back the hands of the clock of the history,” Kim said in Monday’s statement.
Former President Yoon endorsed a hardline stance against Pyongyang, bolstered by strong South Korean-US military relations, which included ramping up joint military exercises, seeing assets like a US Navy ballistic missile submarine and aircraft carriers visit South Korean ports, and participation in trilateral military exercises with Japan – also a North Korean foe – as well as the US.
In its first official comments on North-South relations under the Lee administration, South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Monday said Seoul would continue to look for ways to engage with Pyongyang.
Unification Ministry spokesperson Koo Byoung-sam noted that Kim’s comments were not especially hostile or mocking, compared to her previous statements on inter-Korean relations.
But, Koo said, it shows that Pyongyang is closely watching the Lee administration’s North Korea policy, while “the wall of mistrust” between the two Koreas is “very high.”
In an attempt to ease tensions, Lee’s government has suspended loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone and stopped the distribution of South Korean leaflets dropped from balloons into the North.
In 2024, North Korea scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification and blew up roads and bridges that could link the two countries as relations soured.
In response to the road destruction in October, the South Korean military opened fire within the area south of the military demarcation line while announcing it was maintaining “fully readiness posture under cooperation with the US.”
But the new South Korean government will be less reactionary, said Koo, the Unification Ministry spokesperson.
“The government will consistently make efforts to create inter-Korean relations of reconciliation and cooperation and to realize coexistence of peace on the Korean Peninsula without being sensitive to North Korea’s response,” he said.
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