SEOUL – The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un today slammed a new agreement between South Korea and the United States bolstering Washington’s nuclear deterrence efforts against Pyongyang’s threats, saying the allies’ plan will only result in “more serious danger”.
In North Korea’s first response to the Washington Declaration adopted during the South’s President Yoon Suk-yeol’s state visit to the US, Kim Yo-jong said that the agreement reflects “the most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North that will “only result in making peace and security of Northeast Asia and the world be exposed to more serious danger,” Yonhap news agency cited the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang’s state news agency.
Yo-jong’s remarks came three days after Yoon and US President Joe Biden agreed to significantly strengthen Washington’s nuclear commitment to South Korea in the new agreement and promised to take “swift, overwhelming, and decisive” action in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.
Under the declaration, Yoon and Biden agreed to establish a Nuclear Consultative Group and more frequent deployments of US strategic assets to South Korea.
Yo-jong, who is known for her influence on inter-Korean affairs in the Kim regime, holding the post of vice-department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, warned that the change in the security environment would only push the North to take “more decisive action.”
“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defence will become in direct proportion to them,” she was quoted as saying in the English-language dispatch.
Yo-jong also lashed out at both leaders, lambasting Biden’s warning that any nuclear attack against the US or its allies will result in the end of its regime.
Saying that Biden was “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave”, Yo-jong painted the warning as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”
“It may be taken as a nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage who is not at all capable of taking the responsibility for security and the future of the US, an old man with no future, as it is too much for him to serve out the two-year remainder of his office term,” Yo-jong said.
She also took a swipe at Yoon, calling him a “fool” who has “put the security into crisis with his incompetence.”
“The pipe dream of the US and South Korea will henceforth be faced with the entity of more powerful strength,” Kim said.
Meanwhile, Seoul’s Unification Ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs condemned her remarks, calling them “far-fetched” claims.
“North Korea hastily issuing far-fetched claims right after the announcement of the Washington Declaration appears to reflect its nervousness and frustration at the drastically strengthening nuclear deterrence of the South Korea-US alliance,” the ministry said in a statement.
It warned that North Korea would face an “even stronger and overwhelming” response if it continues to follow the “wrong path”, while saying Yo-jong’s slandering of the two countries’ leaders in “rude language” demonstrated the regime’s “lowly level”.
The KCNA report came as Yoon’s state visit to the US is under way. – Bernama, April 29, 2023
