Top North Korea official blasts ASEAN for urging denuclearization

SEOUL: The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attacked the bloc of Southeast Asian nations on Monday for seeking a denuclearised Korean peninsula, blasting the position as “stupid and foolish.”
At its annual regional forum last week, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expressed “grave concern” over Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear weapons development and stressed the importance of dialogue “to realize lasting peace and stability in a denuclearised Korean Peninsula.”
North Korea has long insisted on its right to nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, although they are forbidden under the terms of UN Security Council sanctions. It enshrined its nuclear status in its constitution in 2023.
Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state news outlet KCNA that she expressed “strong dissatisfaction with the forum’s undisguised hostile attitude of going along with the US trumpeting about ‘denuclearization’” and ignoring North Korea’s constitution.
“It is a failure in strategic thinking and logic and a manifestation of a stupid and foolish wild dream to still adhere to the ‘denuclearization of the Korean peninsula’ which had already lost its meaning conceptually and practically,” she said.
ASEAN should guard against “being misused as a hired mouthpiece for the US,” she added.
In June, Kim Yo Jong — a key player in the North’s communications and foreign policy — said in a statement that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is “the line of no retreat.”
Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state since Kim Jong Un’s 2019 summit with US President Donald Trump collapsed over the scope of denuclearization and sanctions relief.