(CNN) — Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said she is “completely unaware” whether her brother communicated with US President Donald Trump, as Trump claimed this week.
Kim, one of North Korea’s top officials, acknowledged that her brother has a “great relationship” with Trump and “personally has good memories and feelings” for him. But in a statement released on state media Wednesday, she stopped short of confirming Trump’s claim of recent contact.
Trump told reporters Monday that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation, shortly after the president demanded a sudden reduction in joint military drills with South Korea, a close and long-standing US ally.
Trump did not elaborate on the contact. He added Wednesday that he intends to meet Kim later this year, but he didn’t offer details and would not say whether he has exchanged any letters with North Korea’s leader.
In her statement, Kim Yo Jong said of the reported “communication” between Trump and her brother: “I am not aware of it at all, and perhaps it may be the only thing I do not know as regards the foreign policy of our supreme leadership.”
Kim’s statement is illuminating because she is one of her brother’s top lieutenants and a close confidant, routinely pictured alongside the North Korean leader and someone who often delivers important statements on behalf of the often secretive and opaque rgime.
Joint military drills have long irritated North Korea, and Kim Yo Jong said reducing them does not change “the provocative and offensive nature of them,” even though the US and South Korea frequently emphasize their defensive nature. Scaling the drills back should not be seen as “measure of goodwill,” Kim added.
The annual joint exercises are usually scheduled to run for 10 days, but this year’s will last only five, at Washington’s request. They are designed to adapt to North Korea’s evolving capabilities and incorporate training to counter drones, GPS disruption and cyberattacks, a spokesperson for US Forces Korea said last week.
Sudden scale down of drills
Analysts have warned that by scaling down war games with South Korea, Trump risks working against his own stated goal of having Seoul assume more responsibility for its own defense.
Contained within the military exercises is training to give South Korea something it hasn’t had since the Korean War began in 1950: wartime operational control of the combined South Korea-US forces on the peninsula, analysts point out.
It’s a key goal for both countries. Once Seoul shows it can take on that burden, Washington can take a backseat in any future conflict, providing some firepower but letting South Korea assume most of the responsibility and cost of its defense.
Trump’s demand to scale back the drills – which were months in planning – came on the first day they joint exercises began.
Publicly, South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has welcomed Trump’s request, and reiterated that he supports dialogue with North Korea and wants to take more responsibility for its own defense.
“We sympathize with President Trump’s determination and effort to create conditions for dialogue to establish peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, even if it means scaling back the recent South Korea-US joint military exercise and field training exercises, and we pay tribute to that decision.” Lee said on X late Wednesday.
He added he “fully agrees” with Trump that South Korea “should take responsibility itself of security on the Korean Peninsula while building sufficient capability to independently defend the peninsula by rapidly increasing defense spending to achieve a defense expenditure of 3.5% of GDP.”
When calling for these exercises to be reduced, Trump cited his positive relationship with Kim Jong Un, a longtime US adversary, as well as Seoul’s lack of assistance for the war in Iran.
“I get along with him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “And you know what? The fact that I get along with him — that’s a good thing.”
Trump met with Kim three times for denuclearization talks during his first term, but those talks were ultimately unsuccessful, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has only grown since.
Trump took similar steps to scale back joint operations with South Korea during his first term. In March 2019, the two countries announced that their annual large-scale exercises would be reconfigured and take a reduced form.
This post has been updated with additional developments.
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