The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday attacked South Korea with a series of insults for considering new unilateral sanctions against the North, calling its president and government “idiots” and a “wild dog that runs around gnawing a bone given by the United States.”
Kim Yo Jong’s tirade came two days after South Korea’s foreign ministry said it was considering imposing additional sanctions on North Korea over its recent spate of missile tests. The ministry said it would also consider taking action against alleged North Korean cyberattacks – believed to be a key new source of funding for its weapons program – if the North carries out a major provocation such as a nuclear test.
“I wonder what ‘sanctions’ the South Korean group, which is nothing more than a wild dog running around and gnawing on a bone given to it by the US, will impudently impose on North Korea,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement reported by the state media. “What a show!”.
He called South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol and his administration “idiots who keep creating a dangerous situation.” He added that South Korea “had not been our target” when Moon Jae-in – Yoon’s liberal predecessor who sought reconciliation with North Korea – was in power. The comment could be seen as an attempt to foment anti-Yoon sentiment in South Korea.
“We once again warn the insolent and stupid that the desperate sanctions and pressures of the US and its South Korean puppets against [Corea del Norte] they will add fuel to the fire of the latter’s hostility and anger and serve as a bond for them,” Kim Yo Jong said.
Kim Yo Jong’s official title is vice department head of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party in the North. But the South Korean spy agency says he is the second most powerful person in the North, after his brother, and is in charge of relations with South Korea and the United States.
Although it is not the first time that Kim Yo Jong has used crude invective against South Korea, North Korea is expected to further escalate military tensions on the Korean peninsula, given that she is in charge of relations with South Korea and exercises some influences in the North’s military, said analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.
South Korea was quick to respond to Kim Yo Jong’s insults to Yoon, saying it is “very deplorable that he denounces our head of state with harsh and undervalued words and does not display basic forms of etiquette.” The Seoul Ministry of Unification said in a statement that it strongly condemned what it called “your impure attempt to incite anti-government struggles and shake our system” in South Korea.
Last month, South Korea imposed its own sanctions on 15 individuals and 16 North Korean organizations suspected of engaging in illegal activities to finance North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. They were Seoul’s first unilateral sanctions on North Korea in five years, but experts say they were largely symbolic because the two Koreas have few financial dealings with each other.
However, observers say Seoul’s efforts to coordinate with the United States and other countries to crack down on North Korea’s alleged illicit cyber activities could anger North Korea and hurt funding for its weapons programs. Earlier this year, a UN think tank claimed in a report that North Korea was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions and cryptocurrency companies and exchanges.
North Korea has been subjected to 11 rounds of United Nations sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests since 2006. But the UN Security Council has not adopted new sanctions against North Korea for its series of missile launches. ballistic weapons banned this year due to opposition from China and Russia, two veto-wielding council members who are at odds with the United States.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said Thursday that North Korea is resorting to cybercrime and covert transfers of unauthorized ship-to-ship goods as a way to evade those UN sanctions. Spokesman Lim Soosuk said Kim Yo Jong’s strong reaction to the South’s review of possible unilateral sanctions shows that North Korea cares a lot about such measures. He said South Korea will consider North Korea to face the consequences of illicit ship-to-ship transfers if it conducts a nuclear test, which would be its first in five years.
North Korea has repeatedly said that the UN sanctions, along with regular US military drills with South Korea, are proof of US hostility toward the North. US-led diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear program collapsed in early 2019 over differences over the amount of sanctions relief North Korea should receive in exchange for limited denuclearization steps.
Kim Yo Jong warned on Tuesday that the United States will face “a more fatal security crisis” if it presses for the UN to condemn the North’s recent test of an intercontinental ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting the entire continental United States. He likened the United States to “a barking dog seized with fear.”
North Korea is known for its colorful and crude personal attacks on South Korean and American leaders. She called former South Korean presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye “a rat” and “a whore” respectively, while she described former US President Donald Trump as “a mentally deranged American dotard.” In March 2021, when Moon was still in office, Kim Yo Jong called him an “American-bred parrot.”
Information of: The Times of Israel
Photo credits: PA
