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Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of North Korea’s ruling party and sister to leader Kim Jong-un, speaks at a national meeting on the COVID-19 pandemic on Aug. 10, 2022. (KCNA/Yonhap)

“The US and south Korea [are] undisguised in their dangerous greed and attempt to gain the military upper hand and hold predominant position in the region around the Korean peninsula,” remarked Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “We will watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction[s] against its every move hostile to us.”

Kim Yo-jong offered this warning “upon authorization” on Sunday in her second personal statement published by the Korean Central News Agency this year. While she was nominally representing the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in her statement, she was effectively speaking on behalf of Kim Jong-un himself.

In her statement, Kim Yo-jong said that the US “should stop all the actions posing threats to the security of our state and refuse to tarnish the DPRK’s dignity,” using the acronym for North Korea’s official name.

Kim said that US President Joe Biden was “hoodwinking the world” with his long-standing position that “the door to dialogue is open” and dismissed that as a “foolish trick for earning time through dialogue.” The US should “always [be] thinking twice for its own future security,” she added.

“We still have no intention to stand face to face with them,” Kim said, referring to South Korea, while adding that Seoul “had better think of the consequences to be entailed by its reckless acts.”

These comments reaffirm Kim’s previous statement on Aug. 19, 2022, when she declared that she would “not sit face to face” with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, rejecting the “audacious initiative” that he had unveiled in his commemorative speech on Korea’s Liberation Day, on Aug. 15 of that year. The initiative, Kim said, amounted to a “replica of ‘denuclearization, opening and 3,000’ raised by traitor Lee Myung Bak 10-odd years ago only to be forsaken.”

Kim added in her latest statement that “our ICBM will not be aimed at Seoul,” something she said the “fools” in South Korea need to understand. That amounted to a request for South Korea not to respond to the test launch of the Hwasong-15 on Saturday on the grounds that North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles are intended for use against the US, not South Korea.

“[Other countries] should never tolerate the high-handed and arbitrary practices of the U.S. to turn the UNSC [. . .] into a tool for its heinous hostile policy toward the DPRK,” Kim said in her statement, declaring that “they should not connive at the sinister attempts of the US and its followers [. . .] but let them know that such acts are in vain.”

In these comments, Kim was basically asking China and Russia to exercise their veto power against the US’ push for the UN Security Council to discuss adopting a new sanctions resolution against North Korea.

The US has convened closed-door meetings of the Security Council on Jan. 30 and Feb. 16, but discussion of additional sanctions against North Korea has been thwarted by Chinese and Russian opposition.

Kim’s statement follows a test launch of the Hwasong-15 ICMB on Saturday afternoon and a statement by the spokesperson of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday warning that the US and South Korea “will face unprecedentedly persistent and strong counteractions” if they go ahead with “their already announced plan for military drills.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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