Kim Jong Un’s sister warns Biden over South Korea military drills

Nuclear-armed North Korea has warned Joe Biden against holding military drills with South Korea, ratcheting up tensions as top US diplomats arrived in the region for talks.

Speaking via state media, Kim Yo Jong — the sister of Kim Jong Un and a top aide to the North Korean leader — launched a broadside against US and South Korean military activity, which started this month.

“If it wants to sleep in peace for [the] coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step,” she said. “War drills and hostility can never go with dialogue and co-operation.”

Her comments came as the US secretaries of state and defence held meetings with their Japanese counterparts in Tokyo before heading to Seoul. It is their first overseas trip since Biden took office as US president.

Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, secretary of state Antony Blinken said that Pyongyang was ignoring US efforts to engage.

“To reduce the risks of escalation we reached out to the North Korean government through several channels starting in mid-February,” said Blinken. “To date, we have not received a response from Pyongyang.”

The visit to Asia by the top US diplomats comes as Biden’s administration reviews American policy on North Korea.

Despite three face-to-face meetings between Kim and former president Donald Trump, North Korea continued to develop its nuclear arsenal, while Washington insisted that loosening of sanctions was contingent on concrete steps by Pyongyang to denuclearise.

Pyongyang’s refusal to restart lower-level diplomatic dialogue with the Biden administration has raised concerns among some experts that North Korea will now engage only with higher-level summitry. 

In response to Kim Yo Jong’s statement, Seoul — which has warned of a potential humanitarian disaster unfolding in North Korea stemming from coronavirus border closures and sanctions — urged Pyongyang to “take a flexible stance” and re-engage in talks, according to a defence ministry spokesperson.

As well as vowing to co-operate on the denuclearisation of North Korea, Blinken and his Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi took aim at China, vowing to oppose “coercion and destabilising behaviour towards others in the region”.

In a joint statement, Japan and the US “underscored the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” and said they “shared serious concerns regarding the human rights situation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang”.

Blinken and US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin will now move on to South Korea, where one of their challenges will be to ease tensions between Seoul and Tokyo, with the two US allies at odds over issues of wartime history.

Trilateral co-operation on North Korea “will make us stronger”, Blinken said.