North Korea’s message to Biden: ‘Refrain from causing a stink’

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea issued its first warning shot against the Biden administration Tuesday, denouncing Washington for going forward with joint military exercises with South Korea and raising “a stink” on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea released its statement hours before Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin began meetings with officials in Japan before a trip to South Korea later this week. The visits were meant to strengthen alliances in the region, where the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and China’s growing influence have been cast as major foreign policy challenges.

The statement was the first official comment on the Biden administration from North Korea.

“We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off a powder smell in our land,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by state-run North Korean media Tuesday. “If it wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”

Kim’s statement was the first indication that North Korea has plans to influence the new administration’s policies by raising the prospect of renewed tension on the peninsula, analysts said.

Blinken and Austin were scheduled to fly to South Korea on Wednesday to meet with President Moon Jae-in and other senior South Korean leaders. How to deal with North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats are high on the agenda. During a meeting with officials in Tokyo, Blinken said that the United States would work with allies to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and that “one element of this is the denuclearization of North Korea.”

The Biden administration has said it is conducting a comprehensive review of U.S. policy on North Korea.