Kim Yo-jong goes ballistic as South pooh-poohs latest launch

North Korea

Published: 20 Dec. 2022, 17:03

Kim Yo-jong goes ballistic as South pooh-poohs latest launch

Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, speaks at a mass political gathering in Pyongyang in August that was broadcast by the state-controlled Korean Central Television. Kim issued a vitriolic statement on Tuesday blasting South Koreans who questioned North Korea's reconnaissance and missile reentry capabilities. [YONHAP]

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday blasted South Koreans who questioned Pyongyang's reconnaissance capabilities in response to its launch of a test satellite in a statement carried by state-controlled media on Tuesday.

Kim Yo-jong, who serves as deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party propaganda department, also warned that the regime would soon conduct a long-distance missile launch to silence critics who doubt the regime’s ability to launch a nuclear weapon that can re-enter the atmosphere without disintegrating, according to Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency.

In her vitriolic statement, the North Korean leader’s sister said that Sunday’s spy satellite test involved two missiles, and that the first was intended “only to send signals to the transmitter and test whether the ground control station could trace and receive them.”

Kim also bristled at comments by South Korean defense analysts who said the low-resolution images of Seoul and Incheon taken from the North Korean test satellite demonstrated the shortcomings of North Korean reconnaissance technology.

“I really want to slap these bastards who are rattling on but don’t know where to start,” the KCNA reported Kim as saying.

The KCNA reported that one of the cameras tested Sunday has 20-meter (65-feet) resolution, which Prof. Jang Young-geun of the Korea Aerospace University called “relatively low” compared to typical military reconnaissance satellites that have 0.5-meter resolution in a Monday interview with the JoongAng Ilbo.

Kim claimed the low-resolution images released by state media came from a “test-use camera,” suggesting the choice of a less advanced device was deliberate.

“Who would install and test an expensive high-resolution camera for a single test that lasts under 830 seconds?”

Kim hinted that a more powerful camera would be installed on the regime’s first military reconnaissance satellite, which North Korean state media said Monday would be launched into orbit by April next year.

“I’m already curious what kind of slander will spout when our military satellite soon carries out its mission,” she said.

Kim also heaped scorn on South Korean government statements that condemned the illegal nature of North Korean satellite tests under United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“No matter how much deception and complaining comes out and no matter the cost to our people, there will be no delays in the development of the reconnaissance satellite,” she said.

Under past Security Council resolutions, the North is forbidden from conducting tests involving ballistic missile technology, which includes satellite launches.

“It seems others want to disparage our strategic weapon capabilities by saying it can’t be demonstrated through a lofted-angle launch and must be proven through a normal-angle launch,” she said, adding that the latter was “something that may happen soon.”

The regime’s previous ICBM tests were almost all launched at lofted or sharp angles, which reduces the missile’s demonstrated range. Most of the missiles launched by the regime this past year flew on lofted trajectories and landed in the East Sea, although one intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) fired at a lower angle overflew Japan in early October.

In a separate statement Tuesday, the Pyongyang’s foreign ministry also blasted Tokyo’s recent announcement that it would move to acquire “counterstrike” capabilities in response to China’s increasing military assertiveness and North Korea’s growing missile arsenal.

The ministry said the changes to Japan’s national security strategy were tantamount to “formalizing invasive intent and the ability to conduct pre-emptive strikes on other countries” and warned that Tokyo would soon realize “it made a dangerous choice.”

“We make it clear that we reserve the right to take bold and decisive military measures to defend our national sovereignty, territorial integrity and fundamental interests in light of the complexity of the regional security environment arising from Japan’s negative actions,” the North’s foreign ministry said.

According to Cheon Seong-hwun, former director of the Korea Institute for National Unification, the North’s mention of “territorial integrity” signals Pyongyang has not abandoned its desire to unify the Korean Peninsula under its control.

“Territorial integrity is an ideological extension of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung’s theory of ‘national completion,’ or the North’s strategic aim to reunify the peninsula under its control,” Cheon said.

The North referred to the same concept in a law governing use of its nuclear weapons in September, where it called nuclear force “the basis of the state’s capacity to defend territorial integrity,” and again in an editorial in the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun that suggested the regime could conduct a preemptive nuclear attack if it believed territorial integrity to be under threat.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]