hankyoreh

Kim Yo-jong (circled), first deputy director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), attends a celebration of the WPK’s 75th anniversary in Pyongyang on Oct. 10. (Yonhap News)

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Dec. 9 that Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, had released a statement the previous day in which she said that North Korea will “never forget [. . .] the reckless remarks” of South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.

Kim, whose official position is first deputy director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), accused Kang of making “reckless remarks” when she voiced disbelief about the North Korean authorities’ official position that not a single case of COVID-19 had been reported inside the country.

“Days ago, I heard a detailed report about [an] impudent comment made by [South] Korean Foreign Minister Kang [Kyung-wha] on the emergency anti-epidemic measures of the DPRK [North Korea] during her visit to the Middle East,” Kim said.

During a discussion by participants in the first session of the Manama Dialogue, which was held in Bahrain on Dec. 5, Kang raised doubts about the credibility of North Korea’s continued claims that there are no cases of COVID-19 in the country, describing those claims as “hard to believe.”

Characterizing North Korea’s response to COVID-19 as being a “more closed [and] very top-down decision-making process,” Kang said that the COVID-19 challenge “has made North Korea more [like] North Korea.”

Taking aim at Kang’s remarks, Kim said, “It can be seen from the reckless remarks made by her without any consideration of the consequences that she is too eager to further chill the frozen relations between the north and south of Korea.”

At four sentences, Kim’s statement was quite short. It was only published by the KCNA, which targets foreign readers, and was not printed in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which is considered “required reading” for North Koreans. This suggests that the statement was meant for an outside audience and South Korean authorities rather than the domestic readership.

This stands in contrast with the events of June of this year, when a series of statements by Kim calling the scattering of anti-North propaganda leaflets by defector groups a “hostile act against the republic” — resulting ultimately in the June 16 demolition of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong — were published in the Rodong Sinmun from the outset.

Judging from Kim’s remarks that North Korea “will never forget [Kang’s] words and she might have to pay dearly for it,” the statement is not being read as warning of imminent “action” against the South. Instead, it comes across as a warning to Seoul to refrain from disparaging leader Kim Jong-un’s response to the pandemic, which has involved accepting the consequences of a long-term shutdown of its borders in order to contain the virus. The same day, the Rodong Sinmun published a commentary piece in which the emergency disease control measures spearheaded by Kim were characterized as “necessary to defend the state’s security and the people’s safety, whatever the cost.”

The statement by Kim Yo-jong was the first issued in her name in the five months since a July 10 statement directed at the US. In terms of statements directed at South Korea specifically, it was the first in six months since June 17.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]