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Kim Yo-jong, the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (Yonhap News)

According to the Thursday edition of North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un, stated, “If the enemy persists in such dangerous deeds as fomenting the inroads of virus into our Republic, we will respond to it by not only exterminating the virus but also wiping out the south Korean authorities.”

The comment came during a speech Kim Yo-jong gave during a national meeting on emergency disease control work held in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Kim's official title is vice department director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee.

“The recent national hardship sustained by us was definitely attributable to the hysteric farce kicked off by the enemy to escalate the confrontation with our Republic with the global health crisis as a momentum,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Kim said it was time for North Korea to “renew its awareness of our enemies and of south Korea.” She went on to call “the south Korean puppets” the “invariable principal enemy” of the North.

Saying that South Korea puts alliances before kin, Kim Yo-jong said, “To hold the anachronistic idea that those hateful things of the south are our kind would be the most horrible act of self-destruction.”

“The current puppet regime has at once returned propaganda leaflet disseminators, which the previous puppet regime had confiscated in 2020, back to those ugly humans, and is also acting as if it will scrap the law prohibiting the dissemination of leaflets to North Korea, which was enacted at least as a formality,” she continued, “We have already considered various counteraction plans but our countermeasure must be a deadly retaliatory one.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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