SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – In North Korea’s first comments to the Biden government, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister warned the United States on Tuesday to “avoid causing a bad smell” if they want to “sleep in peace” for the next four years.
Kim Yo Jong’s statement was released when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Asia to talk to US allies, Japan and South Korea, about North Korea and other regional issues. They met in Tokyo on Tuesday before speaking to officials in Seoul on Wednesday.
“We take this opportunity to alert the new US administration that is endeavoring to exhale the smell of gunpowder (from weapons) on our lands,” she said. “If he wants to sleep peacefully for the next four years, it is best not to cause a stink in the first stage.”
Kim Yo Jong, a senior official who deals with inter-Korean affairs, also criticized the United States and South Korea for carrying out military exercises. She also said that the North would consider abandoning a 2018 bilateral agreement to reduce military tensions and abolish a ruling party unit with decades of responsibility to deal with inter-Korean relations if it no longer needed to cooperate with the south.
She said the North would also consider giving up an office that handled South Korean travel to the scenic Diamond Mountain, which Seoul suspended in 2008 after a North Korean guard killed a South Korean tourist.
The North “will observe the future attitudes and actions of the (South Korean) authorities” before determining whether to take exceptional measures against its rival, she said in a statement published in the official Pyongyang newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
The challenges posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and China’s growing influence are looming on the Biden government’s first cabinet-level trip abroad, part of a larger effort to reinforce US influence and repress concerns about the role of USA in Asia after four years of “America’s approach first.
A senior Biden government official said on Saturday that US officials had tried to contact North Korea through various channels since last month, but had yet to receive a response. The official was not allowed to publicly discuss the diplomatic scope and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This is Kim Yo Jong continuing to be the tip of the wedge that North Korea is trying to drive between South Korea and its ally in the United States,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul. “North Korea’s latest threats mean that the allies have very little time to coordinate their approaches to deterrence, sanctions and engagement.”
Biden’s presidency begins when Kim Jong Un faces perhaps the most difficult moment of his nine-year rule. His country’s shaky economy has further declined amid the closure of a border pandemic, while its summits with Trump have failed to lift paralyzing sanctions.
Although Kim has promised to strengthen his nuclear weapons program in recent political speeches, he also said that the fate of relations with the United States depends on Washington’s actions.
The 2018 military agreement, which was the most tangible result of the three summits between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, requires countries to take measures to reduce conventional military threats, such as the establishment of border barriers in land and sea and non-fly zones.
But inter-Korean relations were in ruins amid an impasse in nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang.
The South Korean and American military began annual military exercises last week, which continue until Thursday. The exercises are command post and computer simulation exercises and do not involve field training. They said they carried out the reduced exercises after reviewing factors such as the status of COVID-19 and diplomatic efforts to resume nuclear talks with North Korea.
But Kim Yo Jong said that even the smallest exercises are an act of hostility towards the North. In the past, the North has always responded with US-South Korea simulations with missile tests.
“(War exercises) and hostility can never go hand in hand with dialogue and cooperation,” she said.
Boo Seung-chan, a spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of Defense, said the combined exercises are defensive in nature and called on the North to show a “more flexible attitude” that would be constructive to stabilize peace on the Korean Peninsula. He said the military in the South was not detecting any unusual signs of military activity in the North.