North Korea says it has ‘no need to sit face to face with’ US

North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong called Washington an “unreliable and hostile” entity

Kim Yo-jong, a high-ranking Workers’ Party of Korea official and the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (KCNA/Yonhap)

In a statement released Wednesday, a top North Korean official said that Pyongyang’s stance toward the US remains unequivocal, declaring that “we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons.”

“The continued hostile [signals] of the US to our state compels the DPRK to reconsider the US entity in various [respects],” said Kim Yo-jong, the high-ranking sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a statement published by Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

 “The choice for peace includes dialogue of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us,” Kim added. “To the hostile signals that the United States continuously sends, we do not know how to respond otherwise.”

 Kim’s comments about the possibility of dialogue with the US come just one day after she denied allegations that North Korea was behind a record-setting hack of Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange.

 “The so-called ‘cryptocurrency hacking case by the DPRK’ is no more than a tip of [the] iceberg that shows the essence of the US hostile policy toward the DPRK,” Kim said.

 “Recently, the US again called for someone’s ‘denuclearization’ at a tripartite diplomatic gathering with Japan and the ROK and has set new records of anti-DPRK hostility day by day in all aspects of denuclearization, human rights, cyber, sanctions and military affairs, evidenced by the staging of joint military drills under various missions, the imposition of unilateral and multilateral sanctions and the publication of [the] ‘Trafficking in Persons Report,’” she said.