Kim Yo-jong warns Joe Biden administration against 'causing a stink' if it wants to sleep peacefully
Days after the Joe Biden administration confirmed that North Korea has not responded to its behind-the-scenes diplomatic outreach since mid-February, Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, spoke out against America’s ongoing military drill in South Korea and warned the new administration in Washington against “causing a stink” if it wanted to give peace a chance, North Korean state news agency KCNA reported on Tuesday, March 16. “We take this opportunity to warn the new US administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land. If it wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step,” the 33-year-old powerful woman leader said.
Yo-jong’s statement also came at a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Japan on Monday, March 15, on their first international trip and were set to visit South Korea on Wednesday, March 17, to rally military alliances as a bulwark against China and North Korea. Yo-jong’s words also marked Pyongyang’s first explicit reference to President Biden, more than four months after he defeated former president Donald Trump, who had taken an initiative to make peace with the pariah state and met Kim Jong-un at different locations a number of times during his only tenure. Last week, too, North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried a statement from Yo-jong who offered “a word of advice to the new administration of the United States that is struggling to spread the smell of gunpowder on our land”, AFP reported. “If you wish to sleep well for the next four years, it would be better not to create work from the start that will make you lose sleep,” she said. Yo-jong also warned that war drills and hostility can never go with dialogue and cooperation.
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Trump's bromance with North Korea did not bring results
Under Trump, the world saw an unusual bromance between the leaders of the world’s oldest democracy and one of the most notorious dictatorships after trading threats of war. But the high-profile Trump-Kim meetings eventually saw little progress in realizing Washington’s aim of denuclearizing North Korea, which faces several international sanctions for its banned weapons program. Shortly before the inauguration of Biden, Kim Jong-un decried the US as his country’s “foremost principal enemy” and Pyongyang subsequently launched a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military event. Relations between the two Koreas also plummeted after South Korea played the role of a peace-broker between Washington and Pyongyang and the ties between the two neighbors have remained sour ever since the Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, collapsed in February 2019. Yo-jong is an influential advisor in the Kim regime and was a key voice when tensions between the two Koreas rose last year, culminating in Pyongyang blowing up a liaison office on its side of the border with South Korea.
'North Korea making itself relevant for US-South Korea talks'
The timing of Yo-jong’s remarks were aimed at making North Korea a hot topic during the discussions that Austin and Blinken will have with their South Korean counterparts in Seoul this week, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London told Reuters. “Until now, the discussion was focusing on The Quad, dealing with China and the North Korea policy review,” he said, adding: “Now Kim’s statement will be central to discussions.”
Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, told AFP: “North Korea has judged that the US will not offer enough concessions and so has released this statement ahead of Blinken and Austin's visit to Seoul.”
The US and South Korea are treaty allies with the former putting around 28,500 troops in South Korea to defend it against its aggressive northern neighbor. North Korea, on the other hand, always condemns such drills as preparations for invasion and in a statement, Yo-jong said: “The South Korean government yet again chose the ‘March of War’, the ‘March of Crisis’ rather than a ‘warm March’ before all the people.”
“It will not be easy for the warm spring days of three years ago to come back if the South Korean government follows whatever instructions of its master,” she said, threatening to abandon a North-South military agreement if Seoul acts more provocatively.
Pyongyang has so far rebuffed entreaties from the US to engage in talks, the White House said on Monday. The chill in the ties that began under Trump has now extended into the Biden presidency.