N.K. leader′s sister slams S. Korea-U.S.-Japan pledge to denuclearize North as ′most hostile act′

▲ This undated photo shows Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the central committee of North Korea's ruling party. (Yonhap)

N Korea-denuclearization

N.K. leader's sister slams S. Korea-U.S.-Japan pledge to denuclearize North as 'most hostile act'

SEOUL, April 9 (Yonhap) -- The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has denounced a recent pledge by South Korea, the United States and Japan to denuclearize Pyongyang, calling it the "most hostile act" and saying it won't change the country's possession of nuclear weapons.

Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the ruling party's central committee, issued the statement Wednesday in response to the outcome of last week's trilateral meeting of the three countries' foreign ministers.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya reaffirmed their commitment to denuclearizing North Korea on the margins of a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) last Thursday.

Kim claimed the joint pledge only revealed the uneasiness of the three countries about addressing North Korea's denuclearization, saying they know it is only "a daydream that can never come true."

"If they frantically cry out for 'denuclearization,' really believing in it, they must be termed nonsensical," she noted in the statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

North Korea's status as "a nuclear weapons state" is "a result of the inevitable option which accurately reflected the hostile threat from outside and the change in the present and future world security mechanical structure," she also claimed. "So it does not change no matter how desperately anyone denies."

For North Korea, discussing the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons or reviving the "dead concept of denuclearization" only constitutes "the most hostile act of denying" its sovereignty and attempting to force it "to renounce its constitution and social system," according to Kim.

"If the U.S. and its vassal forces continue to insist on anachronistic 'denuclearization' while talking about 'threat' from someone, it will only give unlimited justness and justification to the advance" of North Korea's pursuit of the "strongest nuclear force for self-defense," she added.

The latest remarks mark Kim's first reported public statement in a month following her March 3 condemnation of the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class U.S. aircraft carrier, entering a naval base in South Korea's southeastern city of Busan.

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