Kim Sister: SEOUL, South Korea (A.P.) — On Thursday, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un launched a vicious attack on South Korea, calling its president and his administration “idiots” and “a running wild dog nibbling on a bone handed by the U.S.” for proposing further unilateral sanctions against the North.
Two days before Kim Yo Jong’s tirade, the Foreign Ministry of South Korea had announced it was mulling new penalties against North Korea due to its recent barrage of missile tests. The ministry stated that if the North commits a significant provocation like a nuclear test, it would also consider taking action against purported cyberattacks by North Korea, which is thought to be a crucial new source of revenue for its weapons program.
“I wonder what ‘sanctions’ the South Korean group, no more than a running wild dog gnawing on a bone given by the U.S., impudently will impose on North Korea,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media. “What a spectacle sight!”
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Yoon Suk Yeol, the conservative president of South Korea, and his administration were referred to by her as “idiots who continue to create a dangerous situation.” She continued by saying South Korea “had not been our target” under Moon Jae-in, Yoon’s liberal predecessor who favored diplomacy with North Korea. The remark might have been made to inflame anti-Yoon feelings in South Korea.
“We warn the impudent and stupid once again that the desperate sanctions and pressure of the U.S. and its South Korean stooges against (North Korea) will add fuel to the latter’s hostility and anger, and they will serve as a noose for them,” Kim Yo Jong said.
Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the North’s governing Workers’ Party is Kim Yo Jong’s formal title. She is reportedly the second-most powerful person in the North behind her brother and is in charge of relations with South Korea and the U.S., according to South Korea’s spy service.
Given that Kim Yo Jong is in charge of relations with South Korea and has some influence over the North’s military, even though it is not the first time she has used crude insults toward that country, Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea, predicts that military tensions on the Korean Peninsula will increase further.
As soon as Kim Yo Jong insulted Yoon, South Korea retaliated, calling it “extremely disgusting” for her to do so “with rude, inferior language and display no basic manners of decorum.” In a statement, Seoul’s Unification Ministry sharply denounced “her dirty attempt to foment anti-government struggles and destabilize our system” in South Korea.
Last month, South Korea enacted sanctions against 15 North Korean people and 16 groups believed to have participated in illegal activities to fund the country’s nuclear and missile programs. Although these were the first unilateral restrictions imposed by Seoul against North Korea in five years, experts claim that they were symbolic primarily because there aren’t many financial transactions between the two Koreas.
Image source: Apnews
According to analysts, however, Seoul’s efforts to work with the U.S. and other nations to stop what is allegedly North Korea’s unlawful cyber activities may enrage the country and harm its ability to fund its nuclear development. In a report released earlier this year, a group of U.N. experts claimed North Korea was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from banks, cryptocurrency companies, and exchanges.
Since 2006, North Korea has been subject to 11 rounds of U.N. sanctions because of its nuclear and missile tests. However, the U.N. Security Council has been unable to enact new sanctions against North Korea due to the opposition of China and Russia, two veto-wielding members of the council who are embroiled in conflicts with the United States. North Korea has been conducting a series of illegal ballistic missile launches this year.
On Thursday, the foreign ministry of South Korea stated that North Korea is using covert ship-to-ship transfers of illegal items and cybercrime to get around these U.N. sanctions. According to spokesperson Lim Soosuk, Kim Yo Jong’s direct response to the South’s consideration of potential unilateral sanctions shows how seriously North Korea takes such actions. He stated that if North Korea performs a nuclear test, which would be it’s first in five years, South Korea will consider making North Korea pay for the illegal ship-to-ship transfers.
According to North Korea, the United Nations sanctions and ongoing American military exercises with South Korea are evidence of American animosity toward the country. Disagreements over how much sanctions relief North Korea should receive in exchange for modest disarmament efforts caused the U.S.-led talks over North Korea’s nuclear program to fail in the early months of 2019.
As the North seeks U.N. criticism for its latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking all of the U.S. mainlands, Kim Yo Jong issued a warning on Tuesday that the country would face “a more catastrophic security catastrophe.” The United States, in her words, is like “a barking puppy gripped with panic.”
Leaders of South Korea and the United States frequently get colorful, vulgar personal insults from North Korea. It referred to former U.S. President Donald Trump as “a psychologically unbalanced U.S. dotard” while calling former South Korean Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-Hye, respectively, “a rat” and “a prostitute.” While Moon was still in office in March 2021, Kim Yo Jong referred to him as “a parrot trained by America.”
Kim Sister Warns the United States of a “More Fatal Security Disaster”
As Washington pushes for U.N. condemnation of the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, Kim Jong Un’s influential sister warned the United States on Tuesday that it would face “a fatal security crisis.”
Hours before Kim Yo Jong’s threat, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield informed the U.N. Security Council at an emergency meeting that the U.S. would distribute a planned presidential statement denouncing North Korea’s prohibited missile launches and other destabilizing actions. Following the meeting, Thomas-Greenfield also read a statement from 14 nations endorsing steps to stop North Korea from moving forward with its nuclear development.
The United States was criticized for issuing what Kim Yo Jong, widely regarded as the second most powerful person in North Korea after her brother, called “a despicable joint statement” with countries like Britain, France, Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
The United States, according to Kim, is like “a barking puppy gripped with panic.” She claimed North Korea would view the American-led statement as “a grave political provocation and a wanton breach of our sovereignty.”
“The U.S. should be mindful that no matter how desperately it may seek to disarm (North Korea), it can never deprive (North Korea) of its right to self-defense and that the more hell-bent it gets on the anti-(North Korea) acts, it will face a fatal security crisis,” she said in a statement carried by state media.
The U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday was called in response to North Korea’s ICBM launch on Friday. It was one series of provocative missile tests this year that experts say are intended to upgrade North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and give it more negotiating power in the future. Its most lethal Hwasong-17 missile was used in Friday’s test. Some experts claim that the successful steep-angle launch demonstrated that it could strike any place in the U.S. mainland if shot at a conventional trajectory.
During the Security Council meeting, the United States and its allies fiercely denounced the ICBM launch and demanded that the North Korean nuclear and missile programs be curtailed. However, any more pressure or sanctions on North Korea were resisted by Russia and China, both of which are Security Council members with veto power. The two nations blocked a U.S.-led effort to impose more severe sanctions on North Korea in May because of the latter’s previous ballistic missile tests, which are forbidden by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
In response to ongoing military exercises between the United States and South Korea, which the North Korean government perceives as a practice for an invasion, North Korea has claimed that its testing actions are lawful exercises of its right to self-defense. Officials in Seoul and Washington claim the drills are defensive.
According to Kim Yo Jong, the Security Council’s discussion of North Korea’s ICBM launch is “clearly the application of double standards” by the U.N. body because it “turned blind eyes” to the military exercises between the United States and South Korea. She asserted that North Korea will take “the harshest counteraction to the last” to defend its security and won’t allow any attempt to impair its right to self-defense.
On Monday, Choe Son Hui, the foreign minister of North Korea, described Antonio Guterres as “a puppet of the United States.”
North Korea may soon perform its first nuclear test in five years, which raises concerns.
The current state of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is still shrouded in mystery. Although some analysts claim that North Korea now possesses nuclear-capable missiles capable of hitting both the U.S. mainland and its allies South Korea and Japan, others assert that the North has a long way to go before developing such weapons.
For almost 4 years, Jason Martin has been a freelance writer for newspapers, journals, blogs, books, and online material. He covers the most recent news as well as many other topics.