Kim Yo-jong, a top North Korean official and influential sister of leader Kim Jong-un, has declared that the United States must formally accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed nation, warning that any future dialogue must be grounded in this “irreversible” reality.
In a statement published Tuesday by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim dismissed the idea that personal rapport between national leaders — including past ties between her brother and former U.S. President Donald Trump — should be used as leverage to push for denuclearization.
“The personal relationship between the head of our state and the present U.S. president is not bad,” she acknowledged, but stressed that such ties “must not be misinterpreted or manipulated” to demand unilateral disarmament. “If the personal relations… serve the purpose of denuclearization, it can be interpreted as nothing but a mockery of the other party,” she said.
Kim, who holds a senior position in the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, asserted that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has permanently secured its position as a nuclear weapons state and that its geopolitical status has significantly evolved since the Trump-era diplomacy.
She warned that any U.S. attempts to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear arsenal would be “thoroughly rejected,” calling instead for Washington to engage on the basis of mutual recognition and strategic equilibrium.
“North Korea is open to any option in defending its present national position,” she added, noting that continued confrontation between two nuclear-armed states is “by no means beneficial to each other.”
Her comments come amid ongoing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea maintaining its stance that nuclear weapons serve as a vital deterrent against what it views as persistent threats from the U.S. and South Korea. Joint military exercises near North Korea’s borders have further strained the already fragile relationship.
Between 2018 and 2019, then-President Trump met Kim Jong-un three times in an unprecedented diplomatic effort to negotiate denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief and security guarantees. Despite high-profile summits, the talks ultimately collapsed without a lasting agreement.
North Korea is currently believed to possess around 50 nuclear warheads. Kim Yo-jong’s remarks signal a hardening of Pyongyang’s stance and a call for the U.S. to adjust its policy in line with what she described as a “changed reality.” Failure to do so, she warned, would leave future DPRK-U.S. talks a one-sided “hope” rather than a viable diplomatic path forward.
