North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister has again dismissed peace overtures from South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, declaring that Pyongyang will never see Seoul as a partner for diplomacy, according to state media.
The report by KCNA on Wednesday came as South Korea and its ally, the United States, continued their joint military drills, which includes testing an upgraded response to North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities.
Kim Yo Jong, who is among her brother’s top foreign policy officials, denounced the exercises as a “reckless” invasion rehearsal, according to KCNA, and said that Lee had a “dual personality” by talking about wanting to pursue peace while continuing the war games.
She made the comments during a meeting on Tuesday with senior Foreign Ministry officials about her brother’s diplomatic strategies in the face of persistent threats from rivals and a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, KCNA reported.
“The Republic of Korea [ROK], which is not serious, weighty and honest, will not have even a subordinate work in the regional diplomatic arena centred on the DPRK [The Democratic Republic of Korea],” Kim said, using the official names for the two countries.
“The ROK cannot be a diplomatic partner of the DPRK,” she added.
The statement followed the latest outreach by Lee, who said last week that Seoul would seek to restore a 2018 military agreement between the two countries aimed at reducing border tensions, while urging Pyongyang to reciprocate by rebuilding trust and resuming dialogue.
Since taking office in June, Lee has moved to repair relations that worsened under his conservative predecessor’s hardline policies, including removing front-line speakers that broadcast anti-North Korean propaganda and K-pop.
In a nationally televised speech on Friday, Lee said his government respects North Korea’s current system and that Seoul “will not pursue any form of unification by absorption and has no intention of engaging in hostile acts”.
But he also stressed that South Korea remains committed to an international push to denuclearise North Korea and urged Pyongyang to resume dialogue with Washington and Seoul.
Kim Yo Jong, who previously dismissed Lee’s overtures as a “miscalculation”, described the latest gestures as “a fancy and a pipe dream”.
“We have witnessed and experienced the dirty political system of the ROK for decades… and now we are sick and tired of it,” she said, claiming that South Korea’s “ambition for confrontation” with North Korea has persisted both under the conservative and liberal governments.
“Lee Jae-myung is not that man to change this flow of history” she continued, adding that “the South Korean “government continues to speak rambling pretence about peace and improving relations in order to lay the blame on us for inter-Korean relations never returning again”.
Kim Yo Jong’s comments follow Kim Jong Un’s statements, carried by KCNA on Tuesday, which called the US-South Korea military exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war”. He also promised a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces as he inspected his most advanced warship being fitted with nuclear-capable systems.
The North Korean leader last year declared that North Korea was abandoning longstanding goals of a peaceful unification with South Korea and rewrote Pyongyang’s constitution to mark Seoul as a permanent enemy.
His government has repeatedly dismissed calls by Washington and Seoul to revive negotiations aimed at winding down his nuclear and missile programmes, which derailed in 2019, after a collapsed summit with US President Donald Trump during his first term.
Kim has also made Moscow the priority of his foreign policy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending troops and weapons to support President Vladimir Putin’s war, while also using the conflict as a distraction to accelerate his military nuclear programme.
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