Kim Yo Jong surrounded by bodyguards
Its a sad day today as the stalled progress in inter-Korean reconciliation in the last two years took a very visible turn for the worst today with the [seeming] destruction of the inter-Korean liaision office at Kaesong. This marked more than a year of complaints we have heard from North Koreans about the lack of progress and endless delays by South Korea on various projects. For South Korean, hemmed in by sanctions and cautiousness, there has also been frustration that they have not been able to advance relations. We believe that North Korea, hurt badly by continued economic sanctions and now COVID19, seeks substantive and material benefits of a relationship while South Korea prioritized symbolic rapprochement. This mismatch in intentions will lead hopefully not to a point of no return, and as always we have to look to the longer-term for a brighter future. We worry where things will go from here.
We append some recent communications from the North below with hope that it sheds light on North Korea’s thinking, and it helps future scholars and wiser minds find another window of opportunity and learn from our past. Kim Yo Jong is the vice Director in the Workers’ Party of Korea, sister of party chairman Kim Jong Un, and a leading politician in the country. Previously, she was heavily associated with rapprochement efforts with South Korea, including the Winter Olympics visits in 2018 that paved the way for interactions with the US and South Korea at the Presidential level.
”Expressing her [Kim Yo Jong] absolute sympathy with the statement by the director of the United Front Department, she stated that the north-south relations wouldn't be as they are now if the south Korean authorities were possessed with enough ability and boldness to immediately do the jobs which they failed to do for the past two years. She added that we should neither give our ears to their habitual words nor believe their speech and behavior, which is no more than a gesture, as they are always making a great fuss behind time. The crime committed by the betrayers and human rubbish can't be tolerated at any cost, she said.She also declared that ever-increasing is the unanimous voice of the entire peple who are willing to fight to the end with the human scums who dared to defame the absolute authority of Comrade Chairman of the WPK, the symbol of our country and the representative of the great dignity, and put rubbish into our sacred area and those who connived at such a foolish act, whatever matter would happen.
And she stated that we have decided to make the betrayers and human scums pay for their crime and planned follow-up revenges and that this has become our firm public opinion at home, not a part of the job of the department for struggle against the enemy. We have to make them realise seriously what thay have done and what was wrong in choosing things to touch, she said.
We would rather take revenge upon them with successive acts than issue this kind of statement because it might give some dull people scope to misunderstand this as a possible "threat" and judge our intention in their own way, talking nonsense. Certainly it seems to be the time we said good bye with the south, the statement said.
The first-vice department director said that we will take actions for the next stage and that with the authority empowered by Comrade Chairman, the Party and the state, she has ordered to resolutely carry out the next-stage actions in the relevant departments dealing with the struggle against the enemy.
She also informed that they will soon desperately witness the useless north-south co-office for liasion demolishing with nothing left. She hinted that the right for exercising the next action against the enemy will be given to the General Staff of our army.
Expressing her belief that our army will surely decide something and carry them out to more or less calm our people's anger, she concluded the statement with the last remarks that rubbish should be thrown into the rubbish bin.”
17 June Update: Adding South Korea’s response (via Yonhap News)
The office of President Moon Jae-in strongly condemned the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday for her "rude and senseless" criticism of Moon and warned that it won't tolerate the North's unreasonable words and acts anymore.
"It is a senseless act to disparage (Moon's speech earlier this week) in a very rude tone without understanding its purpose at all," Yoon Do-han, Cheong Wa Dae's senior secretary for public communication, said in a war of words between the two Koreas.
Yoon said what Moon meant was to emphasize that the two Koreas should not back away from the current inter-Korean relationship, which has overcome a crisis of war, and to resolve pending issues via communication and cooperation.
"We won't tolerate any more of North Korea's indiscreet rhetoric and act," which "fundamentally harm" mutual trust between the leaders of the two sides, he added.
He expressed strong regret that the North unilaterally disclosed the South's offer to dispatch a special envoy there in a bid to diffuse tensions on the peninsula.
While inter-Korean relations are rocky, we still try to keep our education programs on track to train the next generation of thought leaders. Join us in the country today!