Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has denied any ongoing communication between her brother and US President Donald Trump, stating that the United States continues to pursue a "hostile" policy toward North Korea.
"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.
Later the same day, Trump said he gets along well with Kim and was planning to meet the North Korean leader.
On Monday, Trump told reporters he had been in touch with Kim and that the North Korean leader had been "very positive" in responding to his proposal for talks. Trump made the claim after being pressed on whether his recent overtures toward Kim Jong Un, and his very public frustration with South Korea, had resulted in any progress.
"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 support the US military operation against Iran. On Sunday, he 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 formal conclusion to the conflict.
On Monday, Trump said 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."
Trump has also questioned the value of other long-standing military alliances, including NATO, which he has pressed to support the Iran operation and to pay the United States for the protection its member countries receive from Washington.
On Monday, Trump said he had secured a payment of $3 billion a year from South Korea during his first term and intended 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 by threatening North Korea and reminding Kim that the United States 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 in a historic encounter described as an agreement on the "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula. They met again in 2019, including in a dramatic meeting at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, where Trump became the first US president to cross into North Korea.
Despite the diplomatic overtures, North Korea has since expanded its missile and nuclear capabilities and deepened its alliance with Russia, including by sending tens of thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.
