Kim’s sister: Summit with U.S. unlikely

SEOUL, South Korea — The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Friday she doesn’t expect her brother to meet President Donald Trump this year, saying there is no reason for the North to gift Trump high-profile meetings when it’s not being rewarded in return.

“But also, you never know,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released through Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, where she called for concessions from Washington to keep alive the nuclear diplomacy.

“That’s because a surprise thing may still happen, depending upon the judgement and decision between the two top leaders,” Kim Yo Jong said. She added that if there is a need for summit talks, it is a U.S. need, while for North Korea, it is “unpractical and does not serve us at all.”

Kim Yo Jong is seen as her brother’s closest confidant and has been confirmed as his top official for inter-Korean affairs. She is also the first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee.

She spoke as the U.S.’s top official on the Koreas is in Asia. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is in Japan after meeting South Korean officials in Seoul, where he accused a North Korean nuclear negotiator of being “locked in an old way of thinking.” His remarks indicated Washington probably won’t make concessions to resume the talks.

Trump and Kim Jong Un have met three times since embarking on nuclear diplomacy in 2018. But talks have faltered since their second summit in February 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korean demands for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capability.

Some analysts believe North Korea will avoid serious talks with the Americans before a return to talks after the U.S. presidential election in November.

Kim Yo Jong said that the diplomacy could be salvaged only by an exchange of “irreversible simultaneous major steps.”

“We would like to make it clear that it does not necessarily mean the denuclearization is not possible. But what we mean is that it is not possible at this point of time,” she said.

North Korea has been pushing a concept of denuclearization that bears no resemblance to the American definition, with Pyongyang vowing to pursue nuclear development until the United States removes its troops and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.