The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dismissed the United States’ stated intent to resume diplomacy on denuclearisation, urging Washington to accept her country as a nuclear weapons state.
Kim Yo Jong insisted a new approach is needed to restart talks, suggesting Pyongyang would only return to the negotiating table if the US offers rewards for a partial surrender of its nuclear capability.
This firm stance comes as some experts believe US President Donald Trump could still seek a diplomatic achievement with North Korea.
Mr Trump has recently spoken of his personal ties with Kim Jong Un and expressed hopes of reigniting nuclear diplomacy between them.
Their high-stakes discussions in 2018-19, which occurred during Mr Trump's first term, collapsed after he rejected Mr Kim’s demands for extensive sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling his main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearisation step.
Mr Kim has since executed weapons tests to modernise and expand his nuclear arsenal.
In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong said the personal relationship between her brother and Trump “is not bad”.
But she said if their personal relations are to serve the purpose of North Korea’s denuclearisation, North Korea would view it as “nothing but a mockery”.
She said North Korea's nuclear capability has sharply increased since the first round of the Kim-Trump diplomacy and that any attempt to deny North Korea as a nuclear weapons state would be rejected.
“If the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-US meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the US side,” Kim Yo Jong said, referring to her country by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
She said it would be “advisable to seek another way of contact".
Kim Yo Jong is a key official on the Central Committee of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. She handles the country’s relations with South Korea and the United States, and South Korean officials and experts believe she is the North’s second-most powerful person after her brother.
Kim Yo Jong said she was responding to reported comments by a US official that Trump is open to talks on denuclearisation.
She likely was referring to a Saturday article by Yonhap news agency that cited an unidentified White House official as saying Trump “remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully denuclearised North Korea”.
“North Korea wants to say it's not interested in talks on denuclearisation and the US must determine what benefits it can give to the North first,” said Nam Sung-wook, a former head of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea’s spy agency.
Mr Nam said Mr Trump's likely desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize would prompt him to seek talks with Kim Jong Un and give him corresponding benefits for taking phased denuclearisation steps.
Mr Nam said North Korea would want broad sanctions relief, a suspension of US-South Korea military drills that it regards as invasion rehearsals and other economic incentives.
Kim Yeol Soo, an analyst at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said US and North Korean officials could meet if they narrow some differences on terms for restoring talks. But he said Mr Trump's unpredictability would make it extremely difficult to predict what concessions the Americans would offer.
Other experts have earlier said that North Korea — now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia — sees no urgent need to resume diplomacy with the US and South Korea. On Monday, Kim Yo Jong rebuffed overtures by South Korea’s new liberal government, saying its “blind trust” in the country’s alliance with the US and hostility toward North Korea make it no different from its conservative predecessor.
Nam said prospects for an early resumption of US-North Korea diplomacy would depend on whether the Russia-Ukraine war ends soon and U.S. tariff negotiations with other countries are proceeded in a direction that Trump wants.
Mr Kim said Mr Trump may use his likely attendance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea this autumn as a chance to travel on to North Korea or a Korean border village to meet Kim Jong Un.
Kim Yo Jong on Monday described as “a daydream” a reported South Korean idea of inviting her brother to the regional summit.
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