North Korea rebuffed overtures by the new South Korean government this week — with top foreign policy official Kim Yo Jong calling it a ‘great miscalculation’. The remarks from Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un‘s sister came amid growing rapprochement between Pyongyang and Russia in recent years — suggesting that North Korea sees no need to resume diplomacy with South Korea and the US anytime soon. Experts suggest that she may also be hoping to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.
‘We have no interest in…’
Lee Jae Myung had taken over as South Korean president last month and initiated several gestures to ease tensions — including the suspension of loudspeaker broadcasts blasting anti-North propaganda across the border and banning the balloon drops of leaflets by activists that had angered Pyongyang. There had been cautious optimism in the South that the North might respond positively and even show willingness to return to dialogue after Pyongyang also shut off its propaganda loudspeakers.
Kim Yo Jong — the influential sister of Kim Jong Un — insisted on Monday that these moves were merely a reversal of ill-intentioned activities that Seoul should never have initiated. Yo Jong also said that their “blind trust” in the US-South Korea alliance and hostility toward North Korea made it no different from conservative predecessors. This was the first official statement from the North Korean government since Lee Jae Myung took office in early June with a promise to improve badly frayed ties with North Korea.
“We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither a reason to meet nor an issue to be discussed,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media.
Who is Kim Yo Jong?
Kim Yo Jong is a leading North Korean politician and the sister of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. She is the youngest child of former leader Kim Jong II and his wife Ko Yong Hui — with US and South Korean records placing her age at 37 years. Yo Jong is a senior official within the ruling party — who is believed to speak for its leader — and often touted as a likely sucessor to her brother. A 2023 biography by South Korean scholar Sung-Yoon Lee had dubbed her “the most dangerous woman in the world”.
Kim Yo Jong had threatened to nuke South Korea during a fiery speech in 2022 — perhaps the first woman to ever issue such a threat. She has taken several swipes at the neighbouring country over the years and even issued proclamations and denunciations in her own name — a first for any woman from the North Korean royal family. On one infamous occasion, she had called the South Korean Defense Minister “a senseless and scum-like guy” and promised that the other country would have “a miserable fate little short of total destruction and ruin”.