SEOUL – North Korea denounced Washington on Tuesday for creating “a stink” on the Korean Peninsula by advancing joint military exercises with South Korea, adopting a confrontational tone in its first official commentary on the Biden government.
“We take this opportunity to alert the new United States government that is striving to exhale a smell of gunpowder in our land,” said Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a statement released by state-owned North Korean media on Tuesday. “If he wants to sleep in peace for the next four years, it is better not to cause a stink in the first stage.”
Kim, who serves as his brother’s spokesman in North Korea’s relations with Seoul and Washington, devoted most of his statement to criticizing Seoul for carrying out its annual military exercises with the United States this month, despite warnings of his brother.
The statement was made when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III landed in Japan for their joint visit this week. Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin were scheduled to fly to South Korea on Wednesday to meet with President Moon Jae-in and other senior South Korean leaders. How to deal with North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threat is high on its agenda.
The Biden government has tried to reach North Korea through various channels in recent weeks, but Pyongyang has not responded, according to the White House.
In his statement, Kim accused South Korea of opting for “war in March” and “crisis in March” instead of “heat in March” when starting the joint military exercises, which the North described as rehearsals for the invasion .
Under former President Donald J. Trump, Washington and Seoul suspended or reduced their joint military exercises to support diplomacy with Kim. After three meetings, Trump’s negotiations with Kim failed without an agreement on how to end North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile capabilities.
Still, the United States and South Korea have greatly reduced the scale of this year’s annual military exercise this year, conducting it as a computer simulation without any major troop movement. South Korea said the exercise was downplayed this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the desire to keep diplomatic momentum with North Korea alive. He asked the North to become more “flexible” and not to increase tensions, as it used to do in the past in response to the United States-South Korea exercises.
On Tuesday, Ms. Kim called South Korea’s diplomatic wishes “ridiculous, sassy and stupid”. She warned that North-South Korean relations would deteriorate further because Seoul had already crossed the “red line”.
“Exercises of war and hostility never go hand in hand with dialogue and cooperation,” she said. “They are about to bring a biting wind, not the warm wind expected by everyone, in the spring days of March.”
She did not elaborate on what the “biting wind” would constitute, but indicated that North Korea could abolish its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, saying that the ruling Workers Party organization focused on dialogue with the South “did not. has a reason for its existence. ”
She also warned that North Korea may consider rescinding a joint North-South Korean military agreement that Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon signed in 2018 during a short rapprochement.
“It is the conclusion that we draw once again that we have nothing to talk to them about,” said Kim.
After his diplomacy with Trump failed to lift sanctions against his country, Kim promised to further advance his country’s nuclear capabilities. At a party meeting in January, he declared that North Korea would build new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles and make its nuclear warheads lighter and more accurate.
North Korea has also become cold towards South Korea, ending all official dialogue with Seoul and blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office. At the party meeting in January, Kim warned that the return of inter-Korean relations to a “point of peace and prosperity” depended on South Korean behavior.
And while Kim himself abstained from personal attacks against Trump and Moon, his sister was often sent to make violent statements against Washington and Seoul.