SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister says her country will never accept South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “foolish” offer of economic benefits in return for denuclearization steps, accusing Seoul of recycling past proposals. refused.
In a comment published in Friday’s edition of North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Kim Yo Jong said his country has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program in exchange for economic cooperation. He questioned the sincerity of South Korea’s calls to improve bilateral relations and criticized the South’s military exercises with the United States and its failure to prevent civilian activists from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other objects across the border. .
He also ridiculed South Korea’s military capabilities and said South Korea misread the launch site of its latest missile tests on Wednesday, which came hours before Yoon used a news conference to urge Pyongyang to return to diplomacy.
Kim Yo Jong’s newspaper column came after she threatened “deadly” retaliation against the South over a recent COVID-19 outbreak in the North, which she dubiously claims was caused by leaflets and other “filth” dropped from balloons. launched by activists from the South.
During a nationally televised speech on Monday, Yoon proposed a “bold” economic assistance package to North Korea if it takes steps to abandon its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. The large-scale aid offers in food and medical care and the modernization of electricity generation systems and seaports and airports were not significantly different from previous South Korean proposals rejected by the North, which is accelerating development. of an arsenal that Kim Jong Un sees as his own. greater guarantee of survival.
“Yoon Suk Yeol’s ‘bold plan’ is a display of the utmost stupidity and is as realistic as trying to dry up the deep blue ocean to make a field of mulberry trees,” he said. “I’m not sure he understands that ‘if the North takes denuclearization steps’ is an assumption that is wrong in itself.”
Inter-Korean ties have worsened amid a deadlock in broader North Korea-US nuclear talks that derailed in early 2019 over disagreements over an easing of crippling US-led sanctions against the North. North in exchange for disarmament measures.
There are concerns that Kim Yo Jong’s threats last week over the leaflets herald a provocation, which may include a missile or nuclear test or even border skirmishes. Tensions could rise further when the United States and South Korea begin their biggest combined training in years next week to counter the North Korean threat. North Korea describes these drills as invasion drills and has often responded with missile tests or other provocations.
North Korea has accelerated its missile tests to a record pace in 2022, launching more than 30 ballistic weapons so far, including its first ICBMs in nearly five years.
The high testing activity underscores North Korea’s dual intent to upgrade its arsenal and force the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power so it can negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength, experts say.
Kim Jong Un could up the ante as soon as there are signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear test since September 2017, when it claimed to have developed a thermonuclear weapon for its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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