Edward Howell

Kim Yo Jong’s growing role is bad news for peace in Korea

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un (L) and sister Kim Yo Jong (Getty images)

The halcyon days of 2018 seem very distant. Two years ago, North Korea sent a delegation to the Pyeongchang winter Olympics; three summits took place between the leaders of the two Koreas; president Trump and Kim Jong-un wined, dined, and produced what John Bolton terms – in his latest book – a ‘substance-free communiqué’ in Singapore. Now the era of newfound warm relations between Pyongyang and Washington seems to be over. 

The ‘permanent and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula’, to which the two Koreas committed in April 2018, is anything but fulfilled. And if recent events show, relations are in danger of deteriorating rapidly. While Kim Jong Un is still at the helm of North Korea, his sister, Kim Yo Jong, is playing a growing role, as mediating force between the party and military, and taking a firmer hold of inter-Korean affairs. She may not have been designated as the Great Leader’s successor – at least for the time being – but her actions and words seem to have garnered her brother’s approval.

Pyongyang had high hopes that South Korea’s leader Moon Jae-in would offer better relations through economic cooperation. It hoped, too, that its neighbour might compel Washington into removing economic sanctions imposed upon the state. In North Korea’s eyes, South Korea has achieved neither of these aims. So the North’s intensification of brinkmanship is one means to induce South Korea to the negotiating table. But will it work?

The recent distribution of anti-DPRK leaflets by South Korean activist groups across the inter-Korean border only furthered the North’s anger at the South. The Panmunjom Declaration, signed by the leaders of the two Koreas in April 2018, forbade such activity. From the vantage point of Pyongyang, if Seoul cannot keep its pledges, there is no need for Pyongyang to reciprocate in good faith.

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Written by
Edward Howell
Edward Howell is a politics lecturer at Oxford. He was involved in launching the BBC World Service in North Korea.

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