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North Korea has flatly rejected the prospect of renewed dialogue with South Korea, declaring it sees “no reason” to engage with its southern neighbour, despite recent overtures from the newly elected South Korean president.
In a statement released on Monday via the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Yo Jong—the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—dismissed efforts by South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung to ease tensions. Since taking office in June, Lee has softened the rhetoric towards Pyongyang and ordered a halt to propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts along the heavily fortified border, which were resumed in retaliation for North Korea’s balloon-borne provocations.
While North Korea has also ceased its own eerie broadcasts across the border, Kim Yo Jong made it clear that these gestures do not signal any shift in the North’s stance.
“If the ROK… expected that it could reverse all the results it had made with a few sentimental words, nothing is more serious miscalculation than it,” she said, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.
“We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither the reason to meet nor the issue to be discussed with the ROK,” she added.
Kim further emphasised that relations between the two Koreas had passed the point of return, stating, “The DPRK-ROK relations have irreversibly gone beyond the time zone of the concept of homogeneous,” using the North’s official acronym.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry responded by acknowledging the deep mistrust between the two nations. “We take this as a sign that the North is closely monitoring the Lee administration’s North Korea policy,” ministry spokesman Koo Byung-sam told reporters.
Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, described Kim Yo Jong’s remarks as a sign of Pyongyang’s hardening stance. “It declares that its hostile perception towards the South has become irreversible,” he told AFP.
The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war, as the 1950–53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. The United States, a key ally of South Korea, maintains around 28,000 troops in the country to deter threats from the nuclear-armed North.
President Lee has repeatedly stated his willingness to engage in talks with North Korea without any preconditions, following years of heightened tensions under his predecessor. However, Pyongyang’s latest response suggests that a diplomatic breakthrough is unlikely in the near term.
