Mick Hartley

KIm Jong-un's charmless sister Kim Yo Jong made the news earlier this week with her comments about the North using its nuclear weapons to "eliminate" South Korea should there be any military confrontation. Here's a report from the Daily NK with some insight into how that went down with the North Korean public. In short, not well:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, yet again criticized South Korean Defense Minister Suh Wook’s comments about “preemptive strikes” just two days after issuing an earlier statement blasting the comments.

However, Kim toned down her rhetoric compared to her previous criticism, a move seemingly aimed at soothing an upset North Korean public.

According to what Daily NK has learned from a source in North Korea on Tuesday, many North Koreans reacted poorly to Kim’s previous statement issued on Sunday.

Discussing on Sunday the South Korean defense ministry’s comments about “preemptive strikes” on the North, Kim said, “As long as the South Korean military revealed its intent to seek provocative incentive of serious level and escalate a showdown with the DPRK, I will give a serious warning upon authorization.”

She went on, threatening, “South Korea should discipline itself if it wants to stave off disaster,” employing coarse language such as “maniac” and “scum-like guy.”

North Korea printed the press statement in the Rodong Sinmun, so it could be read by regular North Koreans. This was an extraordinary move, and suggests the authorities were trying to promote regime cohesion by heightening the atmosphere of inter-Korean confrontation.

However, many people responded with complaints such as, “It would be better if a war broke out and everything got plowed over,” “Die in a war, die of starvation, it’s all the same” and, “If a war breaks out, the first person I want to shoot is our party [committee] secretary.”

With the economy continuing to deteriorate due to border closure in the wake of COVID-19 and protracted international sanctions, and now political tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula, the North Korean public is apparently aiming its discontent at the authorities themselves. 

Faced with the negative reaction to its first statement, North Korea used more restrained, cooler language in its second statement criticizing the South, said the source.

“We will not fire even a single bullet or shell toward south Korea,” said Kim in her second press statement on Tuesday. “This opinion comes not from an obvious contrast with a nuclear weapons state in the light of military capabilities but from the fact that the north and the south of Korea are of the same nation who should not fight against each other.”

In a telephone conversation with Daily NK, Dong-A University professor Kang Dong-won said North Koreans have been dealing with significant economic troubles due to the protracted border closure. In this situation, North Koreans may feel fatigued by the authorities’ attempts to generate confrontation, he added. 

He said North Korea may have tried to promote unity by blaming the outside world for its internal problems, but local discontent — already focused on the government — has apparently risen to a considerable level.

In other words the wretched woman – already well-known for her instant recourse to crude invective whenever she wants to make the news – has over-egged the pudding. She is, basically, something of a liability: a loose cannon who, as a descendant of the sacred Mt Paektu bloodline, is in effect unassailable. And she's unwittingly stirring up anti-regime sentiment.

Excellent. Keep up the good work, Yo Jong!