North Korea lashed out despite South Korea’s calls for new talks Tuesday, saying it was freezing all communication channels and vowing to treat Seoul as an “enemy” in what analysts say may be the opening of a belligerent wave of provocations from Pyongyang.
The assertiveness, a blow to the detente policy pursued by South Korean President Moon Jae-in, may be tied to the rise of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, who has been increasingly visible in Pyongyang since Mr. Kim’s roughly month-long disappearance from public view in April amid a suspected health scare.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Tuesday’s decision to sever all communications with Seoul was made by Kim Yo Jong in coordination with former North Korean spy chief Kim Yong Chol, 72, a notoriously anti-Seoul hardliner in the Pyongyang hierarchy.
Kim Yo Jong in recent days has threatened to permanently shut a liaison office established with Seoul and to shutter a joint factory park in the border town of Kaesong, symbols of reconciliation between the two countries. South Korean officials say the North refused to answer a daily call on the countries’ joint military hotline this week for the first time in two years.
Some experts say Kim Yo Jong, 32, is being given more power should her overweight, heart disease-prone older brother fall seriously ill or die suddenly.
“It seems like Kim Jong-un is placing some of the key levers of power in Kim Yo Jong’s hands,” David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Special Forces colonel and North Korea expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in comments circulated to reporters this week. “Maybe she is being groomed for eventual leadership.”
The regime has clearly lost patience in recent weeks, claiming Seoul has failed — after nearly two years of U.S.-North Korea denuclearization talks — to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and to persuade the Trump administration to ease crippling sanctions on Pyongyang.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have not met in person since a brief visit by the U.S. leader to the Korean demilitarized zone nearly a year ago, and few expect a major diplomatic breakthrough before the U.S. elections in November.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea warned Tuesday that “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea has been exacerbated by economic sanctions.
However, Tuesday’s KCNA statement said the decision to freeze all cross-border communications was a response to what it said was the Moon government’s failure to halt South Korean activists from floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North.
“The South Korean authorities connived at the hostile acts against [North Korea] by the riff-raff, while trying to dodge heavy responsibility with nasty excuses,” said the statement, which specifically quoted Kim Yo Jong as referring to the leaflet activists as “human scum” and “mongrel dogs.”
The comments came despite recent overtures by South Korean officials, who have said recently that they hoped a peaceful inter-Korean diplomatic summit could be held with the North soon, even amid ongoing regional concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.
Tuesday’s KCNA statement ignored Seoul’s overtures, focusing instead on conservative South Korean activists — including many North Korean defectors in the South — who have for years floated balloons into the North with leaflets criticizing the Kim regime’s nuclear ambitions and human rights abuses.
The leaflet issue has been seized upon by the regime in the past as a pretext for expressing anger and discontentment over other matters.
“The North Koreans have been trying to find something they can use to express their dissatisfaction and distrust against South Korea,” Kim Dong-yub, an analyst from Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told The Associated Press. “They’ve now got the leaftleting issue, so I don’t think we can simply resolve [tensions] even if we address issues related to the leafleting.”
He added that Tuesday’s KCNA statement appeared also aimed at strengthening internal unity in Pyongyang and signaling the North’s resolve not to make concessions in any possible future nuclear talks.
• Lauren Meier contributed to this story, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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