'Foolish': North Korea dismisses South's economic aid offer

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

In a commentary published by state media Friday, Kim Yo Jong stressed that her country has no intentions to give away its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programme 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 waste” across their border.

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

“It would have been more favourable for his image to shut his mouth, rather than talking nonsense as he had nothing better to say,” she said about Yoon.

South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, expressed “strong regret” over Kim Yo Jong's comments, and Yoon's office called for Pyongyang to show “self-restraint” and “think deeply” about Seoul's offer.

“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,” Lee Hyo-jung, a Unification Ministry spokesperson, said during a briefing.

Kim Yo Jong last week had threatened “deadly” retaliation against the South over the COVID-19 outbreak in the North, which it dubiously claims was caused by leaflets and other objects dropped from balloons launched by southern activists.

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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 programme.

The offers of large-scale aid in food and health care and modernising 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.”

She said South Korea's words and actions would only incite “surging hatred and wrath” from North Koreans and insisted Pyongyang has no immediate plans to revive long-stalled diplomacy with Seoul.

“It is our earnest desire to live without awareness of each other,” she said.

Inter-Korean ties have worsened amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the U.S. that derailed in 2019 because of disagreements over a relaxation of crippling U.S.-led sanctions on the North in exchange for disarmament steps.

There are concerns that Kim Yo Jong's threats last week over the leafletting portends a provocation, of which the possibilities may include a nuclear or missile test or even border skirmishes.