Kim Yo-jong, the powerful and confrontational sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, on Friday scoffed at South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s offer of economic assistance in exchange for denuclearization as “foolish” and told Yoon to “shut his mouth.”
In a speech on Monday, Yoon offered an ambitious package of economic assistance for impoverished, starving North Koreans if their despotic government would agree to stop developing nuclear missiles.
“We will implement a large-scale program to provide food, providing assistance for establishing infrastructure for the production, transmission and distribution of electrical power, and carry out projects to modernize ports and airports to facilitate trade,” Yoon said at a ceremony commemorating the end of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean peninsula after World War II.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol waves a national flag during the celebration of the 77th National Liberation Day at Presidential House on August 15, 2022, in Seoul, South Korea. The National Liberation Day marks South Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule following the end of World War II, after Japan surrendered between August 14 and 15, 1945. (Ahn Young-Joon – Pool/Getty Images)
“We will also help improve North Korea’s agricultural production, provide assistance to modernize its hospitals and medical infrastructure, and carry out initiatives to allow for international investment and financial support,” he added.
North Korea’s psychotic Communist government spends vast amounts of money on nuclear weapons research and other military assets while the captive population suffers constant threats of famine. The North’s current food crisis is among the most severe in the world — indeed, the situation is so grave that the regime actually admitted it has a food problem.
North Korean children collecting corn on the road in Kaesong, North Korea, on September 7, 2012.
Exact statistics on poverty in North Korea are difficult to calculate because the regime is so secretive, but according to the most careful estimates, about 60% of the population lives below the internationally recognized poverty line. Many North Koreans are forced to join paramilitary labor brigades that never get around to paying them for their grueling work.
North Korea was brutally ravaged by the Wuhan coronavirus, despite the regime falsely claiming not a single case was detected within its borders for as long as it could get away with it. Two weeks ago, the regime claimed Covid-19 had been completely eliminated without any vaccines.
In sum, the North Korean people could certainly use the help Yoon was offering, but Kim Yo-jong — who of course lives far more comfortably than her impoverished subjects — rejected the offer with a contemptuous snarl on Friday.
“It would have been more favorable for his image to shut his mouth, rather than talking nonsense as he had nothing better to say,” she said of Yoon’s “foolish” offer, as quoted by North Korean state media.
“No one barters its destiny for corn cake,” Kim said, dismissing Yoon’s denuclearization offer as the “height of absurdity.”
Kim repeated North Korea’s bizarre accusation that South Korea deliberately infected it with Covid-19 by flying tainted propaganda leaflets across the border on balloons. In a speech last week, she threatened military retaliation against the South for giving her brother a fever while he was masterminding the “amazing miracle” of defeating the coronavirus.
“We have cleared out the virus spread by the South Korean scum. We must counter it firmly. We have already considered various counteraction plans but our countermeasure must be a deadly retaliatory one,” she said last week.
The South Korean Unification Ministry denounced Kim’s “disrespectful and indecent” rejection of Yoon’s proposal, which no other North Korean official has commented on.
“This attitude from North Korea will not only threaten peace on the Korean Peninsula but result in further difficulties for the North by worsening its international isolation and economic situation,” the Unification Ministry said.
President Yoon’s office also said Kim’s response was “rude,” but stressed the offer of assistance still stands.
