North Korea rejects South’s ‘audacious’ economic aid offer | Politics News

Kim Jo Yong, the powerful sister of the North Korean leader says the country will not ‘barter’ away its ‘honour’.

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, has firmly rejected a South Korean offer to help boost the isolated country’s economy if it gives up nuclear weapons.

Kim’s comments mark the first time a senior North Korean official has commented directly on what South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol has dubbed an “audacious plan” under which the South would offer phased economic aid to Pyongyang if it began denuclearisation.

Yoon reiterated the offer on Wednesday at a news conference to mark his first 100 days in office.

“To think that the plan to barter “economic cooperation” for our honour, nukes, is the great dream, hope and plan of Yoon, we came to realise that he is really simple and still childish,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement reported by state news agency KCNA. “No one barters its destiny for corn cake.”

“Though he may knock at the door with what large plan in the future as his “bold plan” does not work, we make it clear that we will not sit face to face with him,” she said.

Experts say Yoon’s economic plan echoes proposals by previous South Korean presidents, including during the failed 2018 and 2019 summits between then-US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

“Yoon’s initiative adds to a long list of failed offers involving South Korean promises to provide economic benefits to North Korea … These were the same assumptions that were behind a succession of failed efforts to jump-start denuclearisation talks,” Scott Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said in a blog post on Thursday.

“The acuteness of North Korea’s economic vulnerability will make the leadership all the more resistant towards South Korean-proposed infrastructure projects,” he added.

The KCNA report also confirmed that North Korea test-fired two cruise missiles into the sea on Wednesday.

They were the first tests in weeks and followed Kim’s declaration of “victory” over the COVID-19 pandemic.

North Korea is banned from testing ballistic missiles under international sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme.

It last tested a nuclear weapon in September 2017; however, observers have speculated recently that preparations for a new nuclear test were underway.