North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, has called on the United States to accept North Korea‘s status as a nuclear weapons state. In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong emphasized that dialogue will never lead to North Korea’s denuclearization, given the country’s “irreversible” nuclear status. According to Kim, recognition of Pyongyang’s capabilities and the radically changed geopolitical environment should be a prerequisite for future discussions.
“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state, which was established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people, will be thoroughly rejected,” Kim Yo Jong stated. She added that North Korea is open to any option in defending its present national position.
Kim Yo Jong further noted that while the relationship between her brother and US President Donald Trump is “not bad,” any attempt to use their personal relations to advance denuclearization would be interpreted as a “mockery.” She emphasized that if the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-US meeting will remain as a “hope” of the US side.
This statement comes after an unnamed White House official was quoted as saying that Trump was open to engaging with Kim Jong Un to achieve a “fully denuclearized” North Korea. However, Kim Yo Jong’s comments suggest that North Korea is unlikely to abandon its nuclear program, and any future negotiations would need to acknowledge its nuclear status.
Jenny Town, director of the Korea program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, believes Kim Yo Jong’s statement is consistent with recent messaging from Pyongyang. Town notes that “too much has changed since 2019, both in terms of North Korea’s WMD development, the legal and policy changes around its nuclear program and status, and the broader geopolitical environment, for any notion of resuming talks about denuclearization to be compelling.” Town adds that if negotiations are possible, the terms of engagement have fundamentally changed, and it won’t be about denuclearization, but there may be room for talks under a different framing.
The US and North Korea have had a complex history of negotiations, including three face-to-face summits between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018 and 2019. However, these talks failed to halt the advance of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs. Given the current situation, it’s unclear whether the US is willing to take a different approach to negotiations, potentially accepting North Korea’s nuclear status.