North Korea rejects Seoul’s ‘foolish’ offer to trade economic aid for denuclearization

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says her country will never give away its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program for economic cooperation.

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says her country will never accept South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “foolish” offer of economic benefits in exchange for denuclearization steps, accusing Seoul of recycling past proposals Pyongyang already rejected.

In a commentary published on Friday’s edition of North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Kim Yo Jong stressed that her country has no intentions to give away its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program for economic cooperation, saying “no one barters its destiny for corn cake.”

She questioned the sincerity of South Korea’s calls for improved bilateral relations while it continues its combined military exercises with the United States and fails to stop civilian activists from flying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other “dirty wastes” across their border.

She also ridiculed South Korea’s military capabilities, saying that the South misread the launch site of its latest missile tests on Wednesday, which came hours before Yoon used a news conference to urge Pyongyang to return to diplomacy.

Kim Yo Jong’s newspaper column came after she threatened “deadly” retaliation against the South last week over a recent COVID-19 outbreak in the North, which it dubiously claims was caused by leaflets and other objects dropped from balloons launched by southern activists.

Yoon during a nationally televised speech on Monday proposed an “audacious” economic assistance package to North Korea if it takes steps to abandon its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program. The offers of large-scale aid in food and health care and modernizing electricity generation systems and seaports and airports weren’t meaningfully different from previous South Korean proposals rejected by the North, which is speeding the development of an arsenal Kim Jong Un sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Kim Yo Jong, one of the most powerful officials in her brother’s government who oversees inter-Korean affairs, said Yoon displayed the “height of absurdity” with his offer, saying it was realistic as creating “mulberry fields in the dark blue ocean.”

“I’m not sure that he knows his assumption ‘if the North took a measure for denuclearization’ was a wrong prerequisite,” she said. “All cannot be bartered. Bitter contempt is what we will only show those spinning a pipedream to succeed in making us abandon our nukes if they pay more stakes.”