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White House press secretary Jan Psaki speaks during a briefing Monday at the White House. (AP/Yonhap News)

The sister of the North Korean leader harshly criticized South Korean President Moon Jae-in, describing him as a “parrot raised by America” and as “brazen-faced. The White House said that, at least for now, a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un isn’t part of the diplomatic approach to Pyongyang that the Biden administration is currently crafting.

In effect, North Korea has publicly declared it has no intention of giving South Korea what it wants — and the US has said much the same about North Korea. After Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the US, some had hoped for a resumption of the Korean Peninsula peace process. But instead, the Korean Peninsula faces a troubling and intensifying war of nerves marked by callous attitudes, low-key warnings, and verbal sparring.

The remarks by Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, were part of a statement run by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Tuesday.

“[Moon] meant the test-firing of ballistic missiles conducted by the [Agency for Defense Development] of South Korea is for peace and dialogue in the Korean Peninsula but [testing] conducted by the Academy of [National] Defence Science of [North Korea] is something undesirable that arouses serious concern among the people in the South and chills the atmosphere for dialogue. We can hardly repress astonishment at his shamelessness,” Kim Yo-Jong said in the statement.

“Such illogical and brazen-faced behavior of South Korea is exactly the same as the gangster-like logic of the US faulting the right of the DPRK to self-defence as a violation of the UN ‘resolutions’ and ‘threats’ to the international community. [Moon] can not feel sorry for being ‘praised’ as a parrot raised by America,” she said.

“He is advised to sometimes think about how he is viewed by the world.”

Kim was contrasting Moon’s voicing of concerns about North Korea’s test launch of new tactical guided missiles with the fact that he’d called for “the development of ballistic missiles with adequate range and the world’s biggest warhead payload” when he visited the Agency for Defense Development on July 23, 2020, for the 50th anniversary of its establishment.

This screenshot from the Korean Central News Agency broadcast shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021. His sister Kim Yo-jong can be seen in the background. (Yonhap News)

In the statement, the KCNA officially confirmed Kim’s position as vice-director of the Information and Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). The statement only carried in the KCNA, which caters to a foreign audience, and wasn’t printed in the Rodong Sinmun, the WPK organ read by the North Korean public.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification expressed “strong regret” about Kim’s statement, remarking that South and North Korea “should maintain a base line of courtesy for each other at all times, in both words and deeds.”

During a press briefing Monday, a reporter quoted Biden as saying he’s “prepared for some form of diplomacy” with North Korea and asked whether that would include sitting down with Kim Jong-un.

In response, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “I think his approach would be quite different, and that is not his intention.”

Psaki’s answer suggests that Biden doesn’t intend to meet Kim Jong-un, reaffirming Biden’s intention of taking a “new approach” that diverges from that of former President Donald Trump, who met Kim on three occasions.

When Biden was asked during a presidential debate in October 2020 about the conditions for meeting Kim Jong-un, Biden said he would meet with Kim “on the condition that he would agree [to draw] down his nuclear capacity.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a virtual press conference Monday that the administration’s North Korea policy review is nearing a conclusion. The final adjustments to that policy are expected to be made during a face-to-face meeting between the national security chiefs of South Korea, the US and Japan in Washington at the end of this week.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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