Kim Yo-jong dismisses IAEA denuclearization call, declares North Korea's nuclear status 'absolute'

Kim Yo-jong, a senior Korean Workers' Party official and sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, pushed back Thursday against the International Atomic Energy Agency's call for denuclearization, declaring that North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed state "cannot be reversed by anything." North Korea's Defense Ministry also raised the stakes by invoking the possibility of triggering its nuclear force policy law in response to US-South Korea CWMD consultations.

According to KCNA, Kim issued a statement Thursday dismissing criticism at the 70th IAEA General Assembly — including references to UN Security Council resolution violations and demands for denuclearization — as "familiar noise."

"It is nothing more than the same old chatter we hear every year at this time, like a sound playing on an answering machine day and night — nothing surprising, nothing new," she said. "Those who gather and jabber in a bid to change our state's current status must clearly understand how pathetically delusional and utterly futile their efforts are."

She went on to say that "no matter how passionately the IAEA and the West periodically convene meetings and chorus calls for denuclearization following a fixed script, it cannot have any effect whatsoever on our will and capability to take all necessary measures to defend the supreme interests of the state."

"The nuclear-armed state status of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is an absolute reality that cannot be reversed by anything," she said, adding that "no matter how rhetorically the hostile forces deny it, they cannot alter by even a fraction the reality that the DPRK's nuclear status is permanently and irreversibly established, both physically and legally."

Kim's statement was a direct response to remarks made at the IAEA General Assembly, which opened Monday, where South Korea and European nations flagged North Korea's nuclear program as a serious threat to the international nonproliferation regime and urged Pyongyang to fulfill its international obligations and pursue complete denuclearization. Ahead of the assembly, the IAEA had also released its annual report documenting signs of expanded uranium enrichment capacity and continued reactor operation in North Korea.

On Wednesday, North Korea's Defense Ministry issued a separate spokesperson statement condemning US-South Korea CWMD consultations — asserting the irreversibility of its nuclear status in response to international denuclearization demands while warning of its nuclear force policy law in response to allied military preparations.

The Defense Ministry spokesperson said the two allies had agreed at a CWMD committee meeting on Sept. 10 to build an intelligence-sharing framework against potential North Korean CWMD attacks, enhance joint response capabilities, and step up combined response exercises.

The ministry called this "a brazen declaration of confrontation that presupposes the use of nuclear and biological and chemical weapons against our state in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula and seeks to accelerate real-world preparations for their use" — framing the allies' enhanced CWMD posture as preparation to deploy nuclear and biochemical weapons against North Korea.

The spokesperson also took issue with CWMD-related drills conducted during the Freedom Shield joint exercise and with US CWMD strategy, and alleged that the United States was conducting biological weapons-related activities in Ukraine and at USFK bases — though the statement offered no specific evidence to support the claims.

The spokesperson then warned that "such threats of mass-casualty weapon attacks and use by the enemies targeting our state can be regarded as a grave security challenge that demands the invocation of the relevant provisions of the state nuclear force policy law."

"We recommend that they carefully interpret what the invocation of those provisions means and take it as a stern warning," the spokesperson added. However, the statement did not specify which provisions of the law it was referring to.