American-South Korea War Games End With Blast of Rhetoric From Kim Jong-un’s Sister and North Korean Missile Tests

American and South Korean forces are winding down five days of shortened military exercises Friday amid highly conflicting, top-level claims about the chances of another summit between President Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. A blast of rhetoric from Mr. Kim’s powerful younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, has poured cold water on Mr. Trump’s confident affirmation that a fourth tryst with Mr. Kim is in the offing.The state of play depends on whom to believe: Mr. Trump or Ms. Kim. Neither her big brother nor his state propaganda machine have said a thing by way of official response to the overture that Mr. Trump made in the form of a shock order to cut the war games down drastically. Mr. Trump’s decision, as he made clear, was another play on the relationship he formed with Mr. Kim beginning with their meeting in Singapore in June 2018.Kim Yo-jong, whose title of deputy director of the central committee of the ruling Worker’s Party makes her North Korea’s second most powerful person after her brother, the party chairman, put out her personal riposte to “the recent news from Washington that there was communication between the leaders.” She was, she said, “completely unaware of this.”Then, in a sardonic touch, she added that the purported interchange between Messrs. Kim and Trump was “perhaps the only issue I am unaware of regarding the foreign policy of our top leadership.” The inference was clear: if I don’t know about it, then it can’t be true.The fact that Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency disseminated her remarks in a “statement” in English gave it a definitive touch suggesting perhaps that Mr. Trump had not actually heard directly from Mr. Kim, as he implied, or that he was basically engaging in wishful thinking.Kim Yo-jong, however, left no doubt that Mr. Trump’s assurances of the rapport that he had formed with her brother were true. “Our head of state has already stated several times that he has fond personal memories and feelings toward Trump,” she wrote. “The relationship between the two leaders is truly excellent. The whole world knows this, and I don’t think it’s anything particularly surprising.”What may be surprising, though, is the venom with which she then proceeded to attack the war games — and the scorn she cast upon Mr. Trump’s decision to abort them.“Nevertheless, the U.S. policy of hostile relations toward Korea has not changed, and the U.S. and its followers continue to fiercely conduct hostile military activities against Korea even today,” she wrote. “Similarly, regardless of the excellent relationship between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, the sovereign exercises we take to check forces threatening our own security are highly sensible, targeted, and essential.”As if to illustrate her point, North Korean gunners fired a dozen short-range ballistic missiles on the evening before the end of the war games, according to South Korea’s joint military staff. The timing appeared to have been carefully coordinated with her diatribe, which had to have had the full approval of her big brother.Mr. Trump has shown no awareness of Kim Yo-jong’s remarks and has not specifically confirmed a formal response from Mr. Kim on his decision to cut short the war games. Rather, he said, in response, as he showed off his new helipad at the White House, to a question as to whether he would meet Mr. Kim again, “I will be.”Mr. Trump did not comment on whether he would, as American negotiators have been doing for years, ask Mr. Kim to give up his nuclear program. “I get along with him, and you know what, the fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”Surprisingly, however, he put an exact number on the size of the North’s stockpile, saying, “He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons.”Actually, defense analysts have been saying for several years that North Korea has as many as 100 nuclear warheads, maybe more. South Korea’s defense minister, Ahn Gyu-bak, talking to South Korean national assembly members, estimated the North has “around 80 to 120 warheads,” according to Seoul’s Yonhap News.Mr. Trump may get a chance to see Mr. Kim in November when leaders of nations in the Asia-Pacific Economic group meet in Shenzhen, China, adjacent to Hong Kong. It seems out of the question that he’ll consider the long-held American and South Korean demand that he give up on his nuclear weapons program.A leftist professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, Moon Chung-in, thinks Washington should drop the denuclearization issue. “The DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) will reject any call for dialogues and negotiations for denuclearization,” he said in written response to questions asked by the English-language Korea Times. “Denuclearization can no longer be on the agenda,”

American-South Korea War Games End With Blast of Rhetoric From Kim Jong-un’s Sister and North Korean Missile Tests

American-South Korea War Games End With Blast of Rhetoric From Kim Jong-un’s Sister and North Korean Missile Tests

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