‘Idiots’: Kim Jong-un’s sister insults South Korea for push to sanction North Korea
- Kim Yo-jong’s comments come days after she warned US would face ‘more fatal security crisis’ as it pushes for UN condemnation of North’s recent missile test
- North previously insulted world leaders, calling South Korean Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye a ‘rat’ and a ‘prostitute’, and Donald Trump a ‘dotard’
“I wonder what ‘sanctions’ the South Korean group, no more than a running wild dog gnawing on a bone given by the US, impudently impose on North Korea,” Kim Yo-jong said in a statement carried by state media. “What a spectacle sight!”
“We warn the impudent and stupid once again that the desperate sanctions and pressure of the US and its South Korean stooges against [North Korea] will add fuel to the latter’s hostility and anger and they will serve as a noose for them,” Kim Yo-jong said.
South Korea called the comments “deplorable” and expressed regret according to a statement released on Thursday by the Unification Ministry.
While it’s not the first time Kim Yo-jong has used crude invectives on South Korea, North Korea is still expected to further escalate military tensions on the Korean peninsula given she is in charge of relations with South Korea and wields some influences on the North’s military, said analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.
Last month, South Korea imposed its own sanctions on 15 North Korean individuals and 16 organizations suspected of involvement in illicit activities to finance North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programmes. They were Seoul’s first unilateral sanctions on North Korea in five years, but experts say they were largely a symbolic step because the two Koreas have little financial dealings between them.
But observers say Seoul’s push to coordinate with the United States and others to crack down on the North’s alleged illicit cyber activities could anger North Korea. Earlier this year, a panel of UN experts said in a report that North Korea was continuing to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions and cryptocurrency firms and exchanges, illicit money that is an important source of funding for its nuclear and missile programmes.
Will US calls for China to curb North Korea fall on deaf ears?
North Korea has repeatedly said the UN sanctions are proof of US hostility toward North Korea along with its regular military drills with South Korea. US-led diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear programme collapsed in early 2019 due to wrangling over how much sanctions relief North Korea would be given in return for its limited denuclearisation steps.
Kim Yo-jong warned on Tuesday the United States would face “a more fatal security crisis” as it pushes for UN condemnation of the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile test that showed its potential to strike all of the mainland US.
Additional reporting by Reuters