Kim Yo-jong speaks at a national conference on disease prevention held in Pyongyang on Aug. 10, 2022. (KCNA/Yonhap)
After South Korea and the US abruptly scaled back their Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise following a directive from US President Donald Trump, North Korea’s unofficial spokesperson Kim Yo-jong, the sister of its leader Kim Jong-un, issued a statement seeking to clarify her stance on “major international issues.”Kim Yo-jong, whose official title is department director of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said in the statement that the North regards Trump’s “reduction of the US-ROK joint military drill [as being] unworthy of comment and [has] no interest in it at all.”“The reduction of the scale and duration of the drill,” Kim said, does not change the US’ basic policy of hostility toward North Korea. At the same time, she observed that her brother’s relationship with Trump “is still excellent,” which was the remark that drew the most attention.But Kim Yo-jong’s statement concerned not only Trump and his curtailment of the ROK-US joint exercise, but also discussed at considerable length Pyongyang’s position on “major international issues escalating the global security crisis.”The section about Trump and the ROK-US joint exercise occupied less than 500 of the 1,200 total words in the statement. Kim deliberately framed North Korea-US relations as just one of multiple security issues in the wider region and the globe.Nor were Trump and the US the first issues addressed in the statement.The first sentence ran as follows: “The trend of the present unpredictable and complicated international situation is a source of the escalation of the geopolitical crisis in different parts of the world and serious concern of the international community aspiring after peace and stability.”Kim then proceeded to voice her opinion on a number of issues, beginning with “the Middle East, the epitome of conflict and chaos in the world.”
