‘No need’ for another summit with Donald Trump: Kim Yo-jong

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said on Friday there was ‘no need’ for another summit with the US.

Kim Yo-Jong’s statement appeared intended to send multiple messages. Picture: AFP

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said on Friday there was “no need” for another summit with the US unless Washington offered a “decisive change” in approach.

Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump first met in Singapore two years ago but talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal have been stalled since their Hanoi summit collapsed in early 2019 over what the North would be willing to give up in exchange for sanctions relief.

Mr Trump said this week he would “certainly” meet with Mr Kim again “if I thought it was going to be helpful”, after speculation that he might pursue another summit if it could help his re-election chances in November.

But in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo-jong — one of her brother’s closest advisers — said: “There is no need for us to sit across with the US right now.”

If a summit was held, she said, “it is too obvious that it will only be used as boring boasting coming from someone’s pride”. Denuclearisation was “not possible at this point”, and could only happen alongside parallel “irreversible simultaneous major steps” by the other side — which she emphasised did not refer to lifting sanctions.

She did not go into specifics, but Washington has 28,500 troops in the South to defend it against its neighbour, and a range of military assets in Japan and the wider Pacific region. Pyongyang insists that it needs its nuclear arsenal to deter a US invasion.

Ms Kim’s lengthy statement appeared intended to send multiple messages. She said she had watched the July 4 Independence Day celebrations in the US on television and had been given permission by her brother to “personally obtain, for sure, the DVD of the celebrations … in the future”.

Her brother had “entrusted me with conveying his wishes to President Trump that he would certainly achieve great successes in his work”, she added.

AFP