Seoul (AFP) – The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Thursday that the country’s nuclear-armed status was “absolute”, calling those hoping for its denuclearisation “idiots”.
North Korea has legally enshrined its status as a nuclear weapons state, with its leadership declaring the country’s atomic arsenal permanent and irreversible.
US President Donald Trump said in August that Pyongyang possesses 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons, with Seoul putting the figure at between 80 and 120.
Seoul said it was paying close attention to Thursday’s remarks because they come as Trump has floated the idea of a new meeting with Kim.
“The DPRK’s position as a nuclear weapons state is absolute which can not reverse with anything,” Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal “makes a significant contribution to deterring the outrageous acts of international rogues”, she said.
Kim’s statement came during the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, where she said the “familiar silly talk” of efforts to denuclearise the North was expected.
“If they believe that it is really possible, they will only hear the word of idiots,” she said.
“No matter how rhetorically the hostile forces may deny, the reality in which the nuclear position of the DPRK has been permanently settled physically and legally cannot change even a bit,” she added, using the acronym for North Korea’s full name.
An official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry said the statement was noteworthy given its timing.
“We are paying close attention to Kim Yo Jong’s statement, as it comes at a time when US President Donald Trump has recently expressed his willingness to pursue dialogue with North Korea,” the official said, according to a transcript obtained by AFP.
The US leader has repeatedly expressed a willingness to resume dialogue with Kim Jong Un, saying last month that he planned to meet him later this year.
Trump met Kim three times during his first term, but their diplomacy ultimately stalled after their 2019 summit in Hanoi failed to produce an agreement on sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would offer in return for denuclearisation.
Pyongyang has expanded its nuclear arsenal since the failed Hanoi summit.
The United States specifically has proven to the world over and over again that maintaining a nuclear arsenal of your own is the only way to guarantee your nations sovereignty.
They spiked nuclear non proliferation ages ago and have essentially forced much of the world to become nuclear armed, increasing the risk of the annihilation of our species drastically.
If North Korea gave up nukes they’d stop existing the next day.
The batshit craziest county on earth knows this simple fact for truth
The fact that the DPRK fully understands that without nukes they would once again be subject to genocide in short order is good evidence that they aren’t actually some absurd hermit kingdom. I personally think countries like Israel are far less rational and are on an assured path to self-destruction, all while they can’t comprehend why outsiders do not support their genocide of Palestine.
Israelis often take videos of their crimes and post them willingly because for other Israelis, it’s funny, and then they are baffled why people react negatively. Israelis don’t see Palestinians as human. Meanwhile, the DPRK has never recognized Israel as a valid state and has always supported Palestinian sovereignty, even supplying resistance groups with weaponry and training.
In reality, the DPRK is a developing country with a consistent ideology called Juche. The reason it seems “crazy” is because we do not actually listen to them on their own terms, we have a language barrier, and because they are so heavily shut out from western views. Documentaries like My Brothers and Sisters in the North, as well as YouTube videos like We Went to North Korea to Get a Haircut help humanize northern Koreans as people.
Food for thought.
And what of the UN Permanent Security Council? It was supposed to prevent nuclear war by giving nuclear powers the veto power. Now there’s more nuclear powers that DON’T have veto power.
This is a recipe for disaster.
And besides, it almost exclusively gets used for shielding Israel’s war crimes, who also has nukes.
We’re fucked. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s a couple members of the P5 that are demonstrating that peace between nations will never happen and that if you don’t have nuclear weapons you are fair game for invasion.
I mean she is obviously right. If Ukraine didn’t give up nukes back then they would not been in a war which lasts that long today.
After the Svoboda lead Maidan coup in 2014 there was a phone call between Tymoshenko and the State Department that got intercepted by Russian intelligence. She was demanding the U.S. “turn Moscow into glass” because they supported democratic secession in the Donbass.
Yeah, Nazi death cults with nukes would be a great idea. The war would be over and we’d all be enjoying scraps of radioactive rat meat around a dumpster fire. 👍
Not to imply Ukraine doesn’t have a nazi problem, but do we have a source that doesn’t have every reason to fabricate that?
Ukraine’s “Nazi problem” is something the West has been fostering for seventy years. So yeah, it was fabricated in that respect. Sure. Okay. 👍
Reread the post.
I am explicitly not disagreeing Ukraine has a nazi problem, half the national heros since the 90s are nazi collaborators.
Incredibly misogynistic and chauvanist article title from RFI. Kim Yo-Jong is the director of the General Affairs Department of the WPK, which is a high position on its own. She both has a name and a role that is far more than just being Kim Jong-Un’s sister, a role that gives her her own political authority. Treating her like she’s some irrelevant figure only connected through blood is horrendous for any actual diplomacy, which may help to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and service decolonization of southern Korea.
