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Kim Yo-jong, the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. (KCNA/Yonhap)

Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, lambasted the South Korean administration’s efforts to thaw frosty inter-Korean relations, calling the South a “most hostile state” that was resorting to “instigation” while pursuing a “pipedream.”

Through such rhetoric, Kim is making clear that there’s no changing the fact that inter-Korean relations are, in the words of Kim Jong-un, the relations “between two states hostile to each other” — not the “special relationship that involves pursuing peaceful reunification” touted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in his Liberation Day address last week. 

The statement is in line with the previous two statements made by Kim Yo-jong on July 28 and Aug. 14, following Lee’s inauguration, but was presented in a different context. 

The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday that Kim held a consultative meeting with the major director generals of the North Korean Foreign Ministry on Tuesday where she “conveyed the foreign policy plan of the head of state,” and “sharply criticized the essence of the deceptive ‘appeasement offensive’ of the ROK government and its double character.” 

ROK stands for Republic of Korea, the official name of South Korea, while DPRK is short for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of the North.

Condemning the South Korean administration’s actions in front of Foreign Ministry officials can be interpreted to mean that Kim is treating South Korea as a foreign country. Like her preceding comments, Kim’s most recent statement was not published in the Rodong Sinmun, which is accessible to the North Korean public.

Kim had clear intentions when summoning the ministry’s major director generals. Not only did she directly criticize South Korea’s attempts to take preemptive measures to ease tension on the Korean Peninsula, saying, “No matter how desperately the stinky confrontational nature is swathed in a wrapper of peace, the awl in the sack can never be hidden.” 

“The real intention is to show continuously that they are making steady efforts for peace,” Kim said.

“The DPRK Foreign Ministry should seek a proper countermeasure as regards the relations with the most hostile state [i.e., South Korea] and the states listening to its instigation,” she added, asking that the ministry adopt a foreign policy that makes other nations think twice before endorsing Lee’s attempts to fix inter-Korean relations. 

The comments from Kim suggest that North Korea is feeling the pressure as the Lee administration’s policy of diffusing tensions and reconciliation stands in stark contrast with Kim’s refusal to communicate and insistence on characterizing inter-Korean relations as those between “belligerent” states. 

Kim went further to say that South Korea “cannot be a diplomatic partner” of North Korea, claiming that Seoul would be completely cut off when North Korea engaged in diplomacy with countries such as the US, China, Japan and Russia.

“The ROK [. . .] will not have even a subordinate work in the regional diplomatic arena centered on the DPRK,” Kim said. 

The three biggest takeaways regarding Seoul’s policy approach to North Korea in Lee’s Liberation Day speech — respecting each other’s systems, renouncing the notion of reunification by absorption, abandoning hostilities — were belittled by Kim as a “rapid U-turn.”

Quoting Lee’s remark that “when small actions accumulate like pebbles, mutual trust will be restored,” made during a Cabinet meeting on the US-South Korea joint military exercise Ulchi Freedom Shield, Kim called the South Korean president a “vagarious poet.”

“The ambition for confrontation with the DPRK has been invariably pursued by the ROK, whether it held the signboard of ‘conservatism’ or wore the mask of ‘democracy,’ Kim announced, stating, “Lee Jae Myung is not the sort of man who will change the course of history.”

Kim went on to call the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise a “US-ROK war drill for aggression.”

“At this moment, the Lee Jae Myung regime is repeating the predecessors’ gibberish of ‘defensive drill,’” Kim continued, slamming the “double character of Seoul authorities, who are carrying two faces under the hood.”

In response to Kim’s statement, the presidential office stated, “We regret to see North Korea distort our heartfelt attempts at reconciliation.” The Unification Ministry stressed the importance of the two Koreas “showing and expressing mutual respect.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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