Kim Jong Un’s sister warns US-S Korea pact risks ‘serious danger’
Kim Jong-un’s sister said North Korea would respond in “direct proportion” to her country’s enemies – the US and South Korea.
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister, has warned that her country will show more military force in response to a new agreement between South Korea and the United States to step up nuclear deterrence to counter threats. from Pyongyang.
The agreement reached this week between Washington and Seoul to strengthen South Korean nuclear security will only exacerbate the situation and shows “extreme” hostility towards North Korea, Kim Yo Jong said, according to a state media report. on Saturday.
North Korea is now convinced it needs to further perfect a “nuclear war deterrent,” Kim Yo Jong said, according to comments published by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“The more determined the enemies are to organize nuclear warfare exercises and the more nuclear assets they deploy near the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right of self-defense will become in direct proportion to them,” she said. , according to KCNA.
The US-South Korea deal will “only expose the peace and security of Northeast Asia and the world to more serious danger, and it is an act that can therefore never be welcome,” she said.
Kim Yo Jong also denounced US President Joe Biden for his warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of the Kim regime, describing the US leader as “too miscalculated and irresponsibly brave”.
North Korea would not simply dismiss Biden’s words as a “nonsensical comment from the person in his dotage,” she added.
“Considering that this phrase was personally used by the President of the United States, our most hostile opponent, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an afterstorm.”
Kim Yo Jong has not specified exactly what actions North Korea plans to take.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Biden released the so-called Washington Declaration this week, strengthening the US nuclear umbrella over South Korea, which has become increasingly nervous about Pyongyang’s aggression. The statement includes “regular deployment of strategic resources,” including the first South Korean port visit by a US nuclear ballistic submarine in decades, a Washington official told AFP news agency this week.
There are no plans to station US nuclear weapons in South Korea.
Tit-for-tat escalation
Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington DC came amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula as the pace of North Korean arms demonstrations and combined US-South Korean military exercises has accelerated in a tit-for-tat cycle over the past year .
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Saturday that Kim Yo Jong — who has a reputation for influencing “inter-Korean affairs in the Kim regime” in her position as deputy department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea — has also been called the South Korean president a “fool” who had brought security into “crisis with his incompetence”.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has tested about 100 missiles, including multiple intercontinental ballistic missile demonstrations and a slew of short-range launches in the north, described as simulated nuclear strikes against South Korea.
Leader Kim Jong Un is widely expected to raise the bar in the coming weeks or months as he continues to accelerate a campaign aimed at cementing his country’s status as a nuclear power.
North Korea has defied years of punitive sanctions to continue with its banned nuclear and missile programs. It has also indicated that it will not consider giving up weapons it sees as insurance against regime change at the hands of a hostile US and its ally Seoul.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for internal Korean affairs, criticized Kim Yo Jong’s comments, saying her “rude language” showed the “low level” of the regime in North Korea, Yonhap reported.