On Thursday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed US appeals for a return to diplomacy and criticised the condemnation of North Korea’s recent spy satellite launch. She pledged to conduct additional launches, violating UN bans. Despite US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield describing the satellite launch as “reckless” during a recent UN Security Council meeting, she reiterated the offer for dialogue without preconditions. Kim Yo Jong rejected the offer, emphasising that North Korea would never engage in negotiations concerning the sovereignty of an independent state and threatened further satellite and weapons launches in the future.
“(North Korea) will continue to make efforts to develop everything belonging to its sovereign rights and continue to exercise the sovereign rights, enjoyed by all the member states of the UN, in a dignified manner without being restricted in the future, too,” she said.
Despite multiple UN Security Council resolutions prohibiting North Korea from engaging in launches involving ballistic technology, such as satellite liftoffs and missile tests, the country contends that it holds sovereign rights to conduct such activities as a response to perceived US-led military threats. The North interprets major US-South Korean military drills as invasion rehearsals and often responds with its own weapons tests. Kim Yo Jong criticised the UN Security Council meeting convened on Monday, characterising it as initiated at “the gangster-like demand of the US and its followers.”
She insisted that Thomas-Greenfield first provide an explanation for the frequent appearance of US strategic assets at South Korean ports. She seemingly alluded to the escalating temporary deployments of potent US military assets, such as aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines, in accordance with a prior US-South Korean agreement aimed at enhancing their defence against North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats.
Following two unsuccessful launch attempts earlier this year, North Korea claimed to have successfully placed its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit last week.
The satellite launch intensified hostilities between North and South Korea, leading to both nations taking aggressive military measures along their heavily fortified border, violating their previous tension-reduction agreement.
