SEOUL (Dispatches) - North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, has bluntly rejected a South Korean offer to help boost the isolated country’s economy if it gives up nuclear weapons.
Kim’s comments mark the first time a senior North Korean official has commented directly on what South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol has dubbed an “audacious plan” under which South Korea would offer phased economic aid to Pyongyang if it began denuclearisation.
Yoon reiterated the offer on Wednesday at a news conference to mark his first 100 days in office.
“It would have been more favorable for his image to shut his mouth,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released by state news agency KCNA, calling Yoon “really simple and still childish” to think that he could trade economic cooperation for North Korea’s honor and nuclear weapons.
“No one barters its destiny for corn cake,” she added.
The aid plan that was first proposed in May and put forward this week by Yoon includes food, energy, and infrastructure help in return for the North abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
“The audacious initiative that I envision will significantly improve North Korea’s economy and its people’s livelihoods in stages if the North ceases the development of its nuclear program and embarks on a genuine and substantive process for denuclearization,” Yoon said said on Monday.
Kim dismissed the offer as the “height of absurdity.”
“Though he may knock at the door with what large plan in the future as his ‘bold plan’ does not work, we make it clear that we will not sit face to face with him,” Kim was quoted as saying.
She also accused Yoon of conducting “invasion war exercises” with the U.S., as Seoul and Washington prepare for large-scale military drills this month, including major field exercises due to begin next week.
South Korea’s Unification Minister, who handles relations with the North, described Kim’s comments as “very disrespectful and indecent.”
The country’s presidential office expressed “strong regret” over her “rude” remarks, but added that the offer of economic aid remained in place.
“North Korea’s attitude is in no way helpful to the peace and prosperity of the Korean peninsula, as well as its own future, and only promotes isolation from the international community,” it said in a statement.
Tensions between the two estranged neighbors have heightened in recent years, fueled by South Korea’s growing alliance with the U.S. and Washington’s sanctions against Pyongyang.