“We take the opportunity to alert the new United States government that is striving to release the smell of gunpowder on our lands,” she said in a statement, according to the state news agency.
“If he wants to sleep peacefully for the next four years, it is best not to cause a stink in the first stage,” she said. The warning comes at a time when the US and South Korea are conducting simulated military exercises on a small scale and US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin land in the region for meetings with their Japanese counterparts and South Koreans.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the government had contacted North Korea, noting that they have “a series of channels, as we always have, through which we can enter. in touch”.
“Diplomacy is always our goal. Our goal is to reduce the risk of escalation. But so far, we have received no response,” said Psaki, noting that the reach “goes on for more than a year without active dialogue with North Korea, despite multiple US attempts to engage. “
However, experts told CNN ahead of Kim Yo Jong’s message that Pyongyang would likely reject diplomatic efforts for a number of reasons, including the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden team’s ongoing policy review for North Korea, the meetings in the region and the rhetoric of the administration.
The Biden government is still conducting a review of the Trump administration’s policy towards North Korea, which could be announced “in the coming weeks”, according to a senior State Department official. While President Joe Biden is unlikely to write “love letters” to Kim Jong Un as his predecessor did, the Biden administration has yet to offer a clear break with the previous administration in its stated objectives for the approach to the Hermit Kingdom. On several occasions, in statements, statements or briefings, American officials have said that their aim is “the complete denuclearization of North Korea”.
“This is just a failure for North Koreans,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
‘Denuclearization is a failure’
“Denuclearization is a failure,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who added that “every time we use that phrase it is a five-yard penalty, because the North Koreans never agreed to this. “
North Koreans see several reasons why they should not denuclearize based on recent history, including situations in Iraq, Libya and, more recently, Iran. Leaders in Iraq and Libya were overthrown after abandoning their nuclear programs under US pressure , while Iran struck a deal with the U.S. just for the Trump administration to withdraw, impose paralyzing economic sanctions and then assassinate the country’s top general and nuclear scientist.
Frank Aum, the senior North Korea expert at the United States Peace Institute, noted that “it’s good to stick to the long-term goal of denuclearization, complete denuclearization for North Korea, but I think the way you message it will be very important. “
“It has to be nuanced because you can’t just say, you know, we want to have conversations, and the conversations are going to be about the complete denuclearization of North Korea, because that sounds very one-sided,” he told CNN. “It would have to be long-term and not Libya’s model of complete denuclearization before we give them what they want.”
In 2018, after a summit in Singapore between then President Donald Trump and Kim, North Korea and the United States agreed to work towards “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” – a phrase that North Koreans have long interpreted as meaning the The United States also has an obligation to remove any nuclear-capable weapons it has on Korean soil.
But after the summit, Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the deal promised North Korea the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear program, despite the fact that it said nothing of the type.
North Korea would continue to describe Pompeo as a “stubborn toxin” whose “demands for unilateral and thief-like denuclearization” infringed the spirit and letter of the Trump-Kim summit. An unidentified North Korean official told the state’s Central Korean News Agency in March 2020 that “listening to Pompeo’s ridiculous language made us give up any hope of dialogue.”
Narang said the insistence by Biden officials to adopt the same emphasis on North Korean denuclearization “is probably not helping, when you insist on something they rejected outright”.
Former officials and experts also noted that commitments by Biden government officials not to raise North Korea’s tariffs during confirmation hearings did not go unnoticed, which may be a factor that led to Pyongyang’s decision not to get involved directly. with the USA.
North Korea following the meetings closely
Kim will also be looking to the Seoul and Tokyo meetings between Blinken and Austin and his Japanese and South Korean colleagues this week and an Alaskan meeting between Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his Chinese colleagues. North Korea is expected to participate in these talks, especially with the South Koreans.
“What if the US and China come out of their meetings this week and make it clear that they are heading for an escalation in US-China tensions? If you are Kim Jong Un, would you understand that China is less likely to put the squeeze on North Korea, “said Anthony Ruggiero, a former National Security Council official. “If that happens, maybe Kim now knows that he can go to China to buy more parts for his nuclear programs, or go to China and sell more coal. That would be a bad sign for the future of any US-North Korea diplomacy. “
Aum also postulated that North Koreans may also be signaling “that they want to engage with the United States at a higher level, because there was a precedent that was set with the leaders’ summits between Trump and Kim.”
Efforts in labor level negotiations between North Korean administration officials and Trump have been largely rejected by Pyongyang, and the few meetings that have taken place have yielded no tangible results.
Despite Kim Yo Jong’s warning to the new government, North Korea did not welcome the arrival of the new president of the United States with a test of his missiles or other weapons, as is usually the case.
Aum said he does not think they “want to do anything to provoke the United States before any major sign that the United States is going to take a very hostile approach”.
However, in recent days, there has been activity at North Korea’s nuclear facility, Yongbyon, according to the analysis of new satellite images published by 38 North, a leading North Korean monitoring group.
And official travel to the region, military exercises and Biden’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in April may still lead Pyongyang to some kind of provocation.