North Korea leader’s sister denies talks with ‘hostile’ US

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Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of any talks between her brother and US President Donald Trump

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has denied any ongoing communication between US President Donald Trump and her brother, maintaining that the US continues to engage in a “hostile” policy towards her country.

“Regarding the recent news from Washington about communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, I am completely unaware of it, and it is likely the only matter concerning our top leadership’s foreign policy that I am unaware of,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday.

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Later on Wednesday, Trump said he gets along well with Kim and was planning to meet the North Korean leader.

Trump on Monday told reporters he had been in touch with Kim, and the leader had been “very positive” in responding to his proposal for talks.

Trump, who has often touted what he says is a close relationship with the unpredictable North Korean leader, made the claim after being pressed by reporters on whether his recent overtures towards Kim Jong Un, and very public resentment of South Korea, had resulted in any progress towards talks.

“Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump said. “I understand him. He understands me.”

Trump has expressed frustration with South Korea’s refusal to help with the war against Iran.

On Sunday, Trump ordered the Pentagon to significantly scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, which hosts around 28,500 US troops, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice but no definite conclusion to the conflict.

Trump said on Monday that US soldiers were in South Korea “guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbour, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran. That’s strange”.

The US president has also questioned the usefulness of other long-time military alliances, including NATO, which he has also pressed to aid with the Iran war and to pay the US for the protection NATO member countries receive from Washington. On Monday, Trump said he had convinced South Korea to pay $3bn a year during his first term as president, and was planning to increase that amount.

“So we were getting paid. We would have been getting paid a lot more,” he said. “But we can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us.”

Trump began his first term as president by threatening North Korea and reminding Kim that his country possessed a far more powerful nuclear capability.

“Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his,” Trump wrote in 2018.

Six months later, Trump and Kim met face to face in Singapore, a historic meeting between the two countries’ leaders described as an agreement on the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula. They met again in 2019, including in a dramatic encounter at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where Trump became the first US president to cross into North Korea.

Trump’s courting of Kim has not yielded many results, analysts have pointed out. North Korea has expanded its missile and nuclear capabilities and has stepped up its alliance with Russia, even sending tens of thousands of troops to fight alongside Moscow in the war in Ukraine.