President Donald Trump’s overtures of friendship toward North Korea have gone unanswered, according to a top regime official in Pyongyang.
Kim Yo Jong, sister and close ally of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, did not outright deny that the dictator has spoken with Trump since the president announced annual military drills with South Korea will be scaled back. Instead, she said that she was not aware of any such communications.
“Regarding the recent news from Washington about communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, I am completely unaware of it, and it is likely the only matter concerning our top leadership’s foreign policy that I am unaware of,” Kim Yo Jong said, according to the Chosun Daily, a South Korean news outlet.
Trump claimed on Monday during a press conference in the Oval Office that Kim Jong Un had responded to his gushingly affectionate Truth Social post, though no statement from Pyongyang was publicly available at the time.
Additionally, despite Trump’s decision to scale down the annual military drills with South Korea, Kim Yo Jong said the mere existence of the operations was an insult — regardless of how many personnel are mobilized.
“Regarding the reduction of US-South Korea joint military exercises suddenly announced by the US president a few days ago, we do not consider it worth commenting on and find it completely uninteresting,” she said. “Even if the duration is reduced, the aggressive nature remains unchanged.”
Trump, speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, said that the annual joint exercises with South Korea were slashed because Seoul stopped “paying for their protection” and said “no thanks” to participating in Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israel strike on Iran.
The supreme leader’s sister separately emphasized, though, that Kim Jong Un enjoys a cordial relationship with Trump.
“We have already stated multiple times that our national leader holds personally positive memories and feelings toward Trump,” she said. “The relationship between the two leaders remains steadfastly excellent. This is common knowledge worldwide and hardly surprising.”
Trump and Kim Jong Un courted each other aggressively during his first administration, culminating in a presidential trip to the Korean border — where he became the first U.S. leader to set foot in the Hermit Kingdom. Summits between the two countries were held in 2018 and 2019, but ultimately, Pyongyang’s refusal to denuclearize destroyed the negotiations.
Their tumultuous relationship was defined by erratic shifts from “love letters” to cutting personal insults. At one point, Trump wrote his counterpart off as a “Little Rocket Man,” and Kim Jong Un shot back that the president was a “dotard” who is “mentally deranged.”
Kim Yo Jong also took the opportunity to reject reports from Western countries that North Korea would be sending an influx of Korean People’s Army soldiers to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
TRUMP GUTTED SOUTH KOREA MILITARY DRILLS DUE TO LACK OF HELP AGAINST IRAN
“The rumor of additional deployments of our military is entirely baseless,” she claimed. “The responsibility for the prolonged Ukraine crisis lies solely with the U.S. and the West.”
North Korean soldiers were initially expected to occupy non-frontline positions like base guards and patrols, but these personnel have become increasingly entangled with their Russian counterparts.
Two North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces last year and have been held in Kyiv for interrogation since.