North Korea has rejected South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s latest bid to revive dialogue, with Kim Yo Jong — the influential sister of leader Kim Jong Un — accusing Seoul of duplicity for pursuing diplomacy while conducting joint military drills with the United States.
In remarks carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Yo Jong said South Korea displayed a “dual personality,” denouncing Lee’s call to restore a 2018 inter-Korean military pact as empty rhetoric. The agreement, which once eased border tensions through buffer zones and no-fly areas, collapsed last year amid escalating hostilities.
“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,” Kim said, using the acronyms for South Korea and North Korea’s official names. She added that Seoul’s “two faces under one hood” proved it could never be a true diplomatic partner.
Lee, who took office in June, has attempted to reset ties with Pyongyang by halting propaganda loudspeakers at the border, promising not to pursue forced unification, and urging renewed dialogue. On Friday, he urged North Korea to rebuild trust by reviving the 2018 pact and reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearisation.
But Pyongyang has responded with open scorn. On Monday, Kim Jong Un toured a newly built warship with nuclear-capable systems and pledged to accelerate the expansion of his arsenal, blasting the ongoing Ulchi Freedom Shield drills as a rehearsal for invasion. The 11-day exercises involve 21,000 troops — mostly South Korean — in both computer-simulated and field operations.
While U.S. officials said delays to some of the exercises were due to extreme heat and flood damage at training sites, North Korean officials dismissed suggestions that diplomacy was behind the adjustments.
Kim Yo Jong also branded Seoul a “faithful dog” of Washington and accused the South of seeking to shift blame for failed relations onto Pyongyang. “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 said.
Tensions on the peninsula remain high, with North Korea deepening its alignment with Moscow and continuing an aggressive weapons buildup. Earlier this month, Pyongyang denied reports it had dismantled propaganda speakers at the border, calling the claim a “red herring.”
North Korea’s defense minister, No Kwang Chol, warned last week that the allies’ drills demonstrated a posture of “military confrontation” and vowed Pyongyang was ready to respond to “any provocation.”
