North Korean leader’s sister warns US against ‘causing a stink’

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s influential sister has warned the administration of US President Joe Biden against “causing a stink at its first step,” as senior American officials are in the region for visits.

Kim Yo-jong, who is a key adviser to her brother, offered “a word of advice to the new administration of the United States that is struggling to spread the smell of gunpowder on our land from across the ocean.”

“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 in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

Her remarks came as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Japan for foreign policy and security talks on Monday.

The two will also discuss the new administration’s review of US policy toward Pyongyang with South Korea, where they are due on Wednesday.

Kim Yo-jong also denounced the annual joint US-South Korea military drills, which began last week.

“War drills and hostility can never go with dialog and cooperation,” she said.

Kim said Seoul was “resorting to shrunken war games, now that they find themselves in the quagmire of a political, economic, and epidemic crisis.”

She said inter-Korean engagement “won’t come easily again” and Pyongyang would be watching to see if there is further provocations.

“The South Korean government yet again chose the ‘March of War,’ the ‘March of Crisis,’ rather than a ‘warm March’ before all the people,” she added.

North and South Korea are still technically at war as a 1953 war they fought ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

They were on a path of rapprochement beginning in January 2018 before the US killed diplomacy.

“It will not be easy for the warm spring days of three years ago to come back if the South Korean government follows whatever instructions of its master,” Kim said.

She also warned that Pyongyang would scrap a North-South military agreement if Seoul acts “more provocatively.”

The North says the US-South Korea drills are rehearsals for an invasion.

Former US president Donald Trump met with the North’s leader three times, but he refused to meet Pyongyang’s demand for the removal of some sanctions in return for major North Korean measures toward demilitarization in the then-ongoing diplomacy.

Observers had already warned that if the Biden administration moved forward with the joint exercises with South Korea, it would likely sabotage any prospect of diplomacy with North Korea in the near future.

US says reached out to North Korea

Meanwhile, the US says it has reached out to Pyongyang to “reduce the risk of escalation,” but has not received a response, according to the US State Department.

“To reduce the risk of escalation, we reached out to the North Korean government through several channels starting in… February,” spokeswoman Jalina Porter said on Monday.

“To date, we have not received any response from Pyongyang. This follows over a year without active dialog with North Korea, despite several attempts by the US to engage,” she added.

The Biden administration has yet to offer a clear policy toward Pyongyang.

The North Korean leader said earlier this year that the US was North Korea’s “foremost, principal enemy,” no matter who was president of the country.

The US has long said its goal is “the complete denuclearization of North Korea.”

On Tuesday, Blinken reiterated that Washington would continue to work with allies toward the denuclearization of North Korea. He made the remark in a bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, in Tokyo.

North Korea has been under harsh US and United Nations sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs.

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