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Kim Jong-un's sister welcomes Kishida's comments, but with caveats

Published: 16 Feb. 2024, 16:31 Updated: 16 Feb. 2024, 16:34

Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, arrives at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East on Sept.13, 2023. [AFP/YONHAP]

The North Korean leader’s influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, welcomed the Japanese prime minister's recent comments about meeting with the North Korean leader.

“I think there would be no reason not to appreciate his recent speech as a positive one, if it was prompted by his real intention to boldly free himself from the past fetters and promote the DPRK-Japan relations,” she was quoted as saying by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday.

The DPRK is the acronym of the North’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She drew the line, however, when it came to discussing the North’s abduction of Japanese citizens — the primary agenda of Kishida in the potential summit.

“If Japan drops its bad habit of unreasonably pulling up the DPRK over its legitimate right to self-defence and does not lay such a stumbling block as the already settled abduction issue in the future way for mending the bilateral relations, there will be no reason for the two countries not to become close and the day of the prime minister's Pyongyang visit might come,” Kim was quoted as saying by the KCNA.

Her comments followed a recent remark by the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the Diet about a potential summit.

In a meeting with the Diet on Feb. 9, Kishida reportedly said a summit with Kim was being pursued “in various ways” and that he feels a “strong need to change the status quo” and will be taking measures himself “to build relations between the leaders.”

Since his inauguration, Kishida has voiced his willingness to meet Kim to discuss the issue of the abductions of Japanese citizens.

According to Japan, North Korea abducted 17 of its citizens in the 1970s and ‘80s.

The Japanese government believes 12 of them are still in the North. Five were returned to Japan after former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang in 2002.

In a statement Friday, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul stressed that any meetings between Japan and North Korea must be for the sake of denuclearization of the North.

"South Korea is maintaining close communications with Japan on North Korea issues," it said, adding that Seoul and Tokyo will continue their close cooperation with Washington to pursue North Korea's denuclearization.

Some experts say Kim’s surprise response could be a part of a ploy to wreak division between South Korea and Japan, as the two nations have been pursuing stronger relations jointly with the United States.

“North Korea knows that it would be difficult to improve North Korea-Japan relations without raising the issue of abductees and nuclear and missile issues, but it still is going ahead with the idea because it sees Japan as a so-called ‘weak link’ in the trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan,” said Lim Eul-chul, professor of North Korean studies at the Institute for Far East Studies at the South's Kyungnam University.

“By responding positively to Japan, it appears that the North wants to leverage the Kishida administration’s need to get a breakthrough in domestic politics,” he said.

Oh Kyung-seop, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said Kim could have issued the statement out of desperation as the regime’s isolation deepens.

“It appears that North Korea intends to seek an exit strategy through a summit meeting with Japan in a situation where it perceives security cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan as a serious threat,” Oh said. “It can be seen as basically sending a message that they want to talk.”

BY ESTHER CHUNG, CHUNG YEONG-GYO [[email protected]]