The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called South Korea’s foreign minister “impudent,” the latter having expressed doubts about the absence of any case of coronavirus in the country, reported Wednesday the official media.
Pyongyang, which closed its borders in January to prevent any risk of contamination, has repeatedly said that no person carrying Covid-19 has been identified.
An assertion reiterated in October by Mr. Kim on the occasion of a giant military parade.
A version that experts doubt even as the virus has appeared in neighboring China, its main trading and support partner.
At a forum in Bahrain, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said on Saturday that it was “hard to believe” that the North has not registered any cases of the coronavirus.
She also clarified that Pyongyang has not responded to Seoul’s offer to help it fight the epidemic.
The pandemic “has made North Korea even more North Korean, that is to say (a country) with a more closed, hierarchical decision-making process that leaves little room for debate concerning measures related to Covid-19 Ms. Kang added.
“Everything indicates that the diet is concentrating very intensely on fighting the disease they say they do not have.”
Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of the North Korean leader condemned the remarks in a statement released on Wednesday by the official KCNA news agency, calling them “impudent” and accusing him of seeking to deteriorate the already tense relations between the two. country.
“You can see from her thoughtless remarks that she doesn’t care about the consequences and that she wants to further cool the already frozen relations between North and South Korea,” Kim said.
“We will never forget her words and she could pay dearly for it.”
North-South relations have continued to deteriorate in the wake of the fiasco of the second summit between US President Donald Trump and Mr. Kim, in February 2019 in Hanoi.
In June, Pyongyang destroyed the inter-Korean liaison office located on its soil which was one of the symbols of detente on the peninsula, saying it had no interest in negotiating.
The North has not yet commented on Joe Biden’s election as President of the United States, nor has the official media reported on the outcome of the poll.
The elected president had qualified during his campaign Mr. Kim of “thug”.
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