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A top North Korean official has publicly contradicted Trump’s claim that he has been in communication with Kim Jong Un, with the leader’s sister saying she is completely unaware of any contact between the two.
Getting into it: Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister and one of his closest advisers, said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA that she knows nothing about the communication Trump has been describing, and that it would be the only piece of her country’s foreign policy she is not read in on. She said her brother has good personal memories and feelings about Trump and that the two of them are still on good terms, then turned around and said the US is North Korea’s greatest threat and that its hostile policy has not changed. She also denied Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s claim that North Korea is preparing to send tens of thousands more troops to fight for Russia.
This comes after Trump said earlier this week that Kim had responded to his outreach and been very positive. By Wednesday he was talking about a meeting. Asked whether he expected to see Kim later this year, he said yes.
He would not say whether the two are exchanging letters the way they did in his first term. He added, “I know Kim Jong-un very well and he’s gonna be fine. As long as we have a smart president, he’s gonna be fine. If we have a dumb president, then he’s probably not going to be so fine.”
All of this follows Trump’s order Sunday for the Pentagon to substantially scale back Ulchi Freedom Shield, the annual exercise with South Korea, which Seoul says came without advance notice. Washington and Seoul have since agreed to wrap the drills up Friday, seven days ahead of the original end date.
Kim Yo Jong called that unworthy of comment and said shortening an exercise does not change what the exercise is. “If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get (the) desired answer,” she said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that nothing has been formally scheduled but that Trump has privately pushed aides to arrange a face-to-face, possibly during a November trip to Asia for the APEC summit in China. He met Kim three times in his first term, including at the DMZ in 2019 when he became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea.
