Kim Yo-jong makes U-turn, says nay to all North Korean contact with Japan

Pyongyang rejects any future contact or talks with Tokyo, the powerful younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Tuesday, a day after floating the possibility of a bilateral summit.

Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), that North Korea “has clearly understood once again the attitude of Japan” and “will pay no attention to and reject any contact and negotiations with the Japanese side.”

On Monday, she said in a statement that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had earlier expressed a willingness to hold a summit with her brother “as soon as possible.”

Tokyo has long called for a resolution to the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s. In 2002, North Korea admitted to abducting 13 Japanese citizens and five were allowed to return home.

Kim claimed on Tuesday that it was the “Japanese side that knocked at the door first requesting” a bilateral summit “without preconditions,” adding that Pyongyang had “only clarified its stand that it would welcome Japan if it is ready to make a new start, not being obsessed by the past.”

She added that a Kim-Kishida summit “is not a matter of concern to the DPRK,” referring to the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She accused Kishida of using the summit to suit his own “political purpose” and salvage his low approval ratings in Japan.

Last month, Kim said North Korea was open to improving ties with Japan, adding that there may come a day where Kishida visits Pyongyang, after the Japanese prime minister in a speech in the Diet that he felt a strong need to change the current relations between the two countries.

The apparent olive branch to Japan was seen by some analysts as a means to negotiations with the United States, amid the North’s dire economic situation and increasing diplomatic isolation amid stringent sanctions against its nuclear weapons programs. Others saw the gesture as an attempt to drive a wedge in the strengthened trilateral security cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, further cemented through the Camp David summit in August last year.

In her Tuesday statement, Kim accused the Japanese prime minister of using the two countries’ relations for political gain amid his low approval ratings.

She claimed that Japan tried to draw in the North’s nuclear and missile issue and “interfere” with its exercise of sovereignty and self-defense.

Kim added that Japan “has no courage to change history” and “promote regional peace and stability and take the first step for the fresh DPRK-Japan relations.”

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]