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Despite recent efforts by Seoul to ease tensions, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, stated Monday that South Korea remains "the enemy" of North Korea. In a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Yo Jong said North Korea has "no interest" in talks with the South, regardless of the proposals offered.
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Yoon said the martial law declaration, which the National Assembly rescinded after six hours, was necessary to fight North Korean influence among opponents to his leadership in the South Korean government.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 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.
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.
