North Korea has rejected South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s latest efforts to improve ties, saying Pyongyang will never treat Seoul as a diplomatic partner.
Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, accused Mr Lee of hypocrisy for calling for dialogue while joining US-South Korea military drills, which North Korea sees as invasion rehearsals. The Western allies argue the drills are necessary to prepare for North Korean aggression.
On Friday, Mr Lee urged Pyongyang to rebuild trust by reviving the 2018 inter-Korean military pact that reduced border tensions through buffer zones and no-fly areas. The deal collapsed after both sides abandoned it – North Korea first, and South Korea later in 2024 amid rising hostilities.
Since taking office in June, Mr Lee has tried to ease tensions with Pyongyang – rolling back propaganda loudspeakers at the border, promising not to pursue forced unification, and now proposing a revival of the 2018 military pact.
He has also urged Pyongyang to return to dialogue and remains firm on denuclearisation.
“Lee Jae Myung is not the sort of man who will change the course of history,” Ms Kim said, according to the state-owned Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) news agency.
“At this moment, the Lee Jae Myung regime is repeating the predecessors’ gibberish of ‘defensive drill’ even after staging the reckless US-ROK war drill for aggression directly threatening the security of the DPRK,” she added. ROK refers to the Republic of Korea, the official name for South Korea, and DPRK refers to the official name of North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“This is the part clearly illuminating the dual personality of the Seoul authorities who are carrying two faces under one hood.”
South Korea and the United States launched joint military exercises this week, testing upgraded responses to North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal.
The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield, the second of South Korea’s two major annual exercises, was to bring together 21,000 troops – including 18,000 South Koreans – for computer-simulated command operations and field training.
And while the allies later delayed half of Ulchi Freedom Shield’s 44 planned field drills until September, US military officials rejected South Korean media claims that the cutback was intended to create space for diplomacy with Pyongyang, saying the changes were due to extreme heat and flood-damaged training sites.
“They continue to tediously talk about peace and improved relations, being well aware that it is impossible to realise them, because they have an ulterior motive to finally shift the responsibility for the DPRK-ROK relations failing to recover onto the DPRK,” Ms Kim said.
On Monday, Kim Jong Un also denounced the South Korea–US military drills and pledged to accelerate the expansion of his nuclear arsenal while touring a new warship equipped with nuclear-capable systems.
State media later quoted his sister, Ms Kim, branding South Korea a “top-class faithful dog” of Washington and declaring that Seoul’s hopes of mending inter-Korean ties “will never” be realised.
In a statement last week, North Korean defence minister No Kwang Chol said the exercises reflected the allies’ posture of “military confrontation” with Pyongyang and warned that its forces were prepared to respond to “any provocation going beyond the boundary line”.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high, with Pyongyang rejecting Mr Lee’s overtures for dialogue as relations have deteriorated in recent years amid Mr Kim’s weapons buildup and closer alignment with Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier, North Korea also denied removing propaganda broadcast speakers on the border with South Korea, with Ms Kim labelling the claim a “red herring”.
In a statement published in the KCNA news agency, Ms Kim said: “We have never removed loudspeakers installed on the border area and are not willing to remove them.”
Meanwhile, Ms Kim said at the Tuesday meeting: “They also know that the DPRK-ROK relations desired by them will never come back. If they don’t know, they will be idiots.”
She added: “Clarifying once again on this occasion, the Republic of Korea cannot be a diplomatic partner of the DPRK.”
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