Kim Jong Un sister says nuclear programme 'line of no retreat'

North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme is “the line of no retreat”, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un said in a statement carried by state media on Sunday ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Pyongyang has long insisted on its right to nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes, although they are forbidden under the terms of UN Security Council sanctions. It enshrined its nuclear status in its constitution in 2023.

“The DPRK’s status as a nuclear weapons state is the line of no retreat,” Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong said in the English version of a statement published by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), using the North’s official name.

“We will never tolerate any threat or compromise related to our sovereignty and security,” she said.

She also cited reported US weapons sales to South Korea, describing them as the “ceaseless arms buildup of the hostile countries”, in justifying Pyongyang’s efforts to strengthen its arsenal.

Kim Yo Jong is a key player in the North’s communications and foreign policy and her statement came on the eve of Xi’s visit, which, according to state media, is scheduled to take place on Monday and Tuesday.

Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support to North Korea, one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and which is under heavy international sanctions.

Xi’s visit to Pyongyang will be his first in seven years, and comes after he hosted back-to-back summits with US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin last month.

Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state since Kim Jong Un’s 2019 summit with Trump collapsed over the scope of denuclearisation and sanctions relief.

North Korea’s leader has since been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces.

He inspected a major munitions factory at the weekend and called for it to boost production capacity, according to a separate KCNA report on Sunday.

This was “in order to supply enough quantity of missiles”, it quoted him as saying.

 ‘Escapist dreams’

Kim Yo Jong also criticised Washington over its comments that the goal of denuclearising North Korea had been reaffirmed during the summit between Trump and Xi in Beijing last month.

The White House posted a fact sheet following the summit stating that “President Trump and President Xi confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea”, but Kim Yo Jong said it was false.

“Still, some officials in the United States have failed to wake from their escapist and anachronistic dreams,” she said.

“This is nothing but an old practise of the US for spreading false information.”

Kim Yo Jong also rejected Washington’s attempts to deny or challenge the North’s status as a nuclear power, saying it “has no legally binding force”.

“The line of steadily beefing up the nuclear war deterrent for self-defence, clarified by the head of state, is an irreversible final conclusion to be carried out unconditionally,” she said.

The statement underscores Pyongyang’s “sensitivity” to any suggestion of a US-China agreement on North Korean denuclearisation, Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.

“Kim’s core message was a categorical rejection of reports of US-China discussions on North Korean denuclearisation as ‘false information’,” he said.

It is possible that Pyongyang had “confirmed with Beijing” during the coordination process for the summit that such discussion had not taken place, Hong said.