North Korea Says It Will Never Give up Nuclear Weapons, Says Relations With Trump ‘Not Bad’

Kim Jong Un’s sister released the statement on Tuesday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's younger sister Kim Yo Jong (C) arrives at the Jinbu train station in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Feb. 9, 2018. Lee Jin-man/AP Photo

A top North Korean regime official said on July 29 that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons but said that ties between Pyongyang and the Trump administration are “not bad.”

“The year 2025 is neither 2018 nor 2019,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by state-run media outlet KCNA.

“The recognition of the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state and the hard fact that its capabilities and geopolitical environment have radically changed should be a prerequisite for predicting and thinking everything in the future,” she said, using an acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea.

Kim, a member of North Korea’s State Affairs Commission, added that if the United States “fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past,” a meeting between Washington and Pyongyang will not occur.

The statement from Kim Yo Jong said she was responding to reported comments by a White House official saying that President Donald Trump would be open to denuclearization talks. She did not mention Trump by name in the statement and was likely referring to a July 26 article published by the South Korean Yonhap news agency that cited an unidentified White House official who said that Trump wants a denuclearized North Korea.

“I do not want to deny the fact that the personal relationship between the head of our state and the present U.S. president is not bad,” Kim added in the statement.

Kim Yo Jong is a key official on the Central Committee of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. She handles North Korea’s relations with South Korea and the United States, and South Korean officials and experts have said she is the country’s second-most powerful person, after her brother.

At their first meeting in Singapore in 2018, Trump and Kim Jong Un signed an agreement in principle to make the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. The subsequent summit in Hanoi in 2019 broke down because of a disagreement over removing international sanctions that had been imposed on Pyongyang.

North Korea has provided troops and arms to Russia in its war in Ukraine, a move that has been criticized by the U.S. government and its allies, who have in turn accused Moscow of giving technological help to Pyongyang in exchange for its support.

Previously, Trump has said that he has a “great relationship” with Kim Jong Un, and the White House has said the president is receptive to the idea of communicating with the reclusive North Korean leader.

On July 28, the White House released a statement from Trump commemorating the anniversary of the armistice signed by the United States, North Korea, and China to end the Korean War on July 27, 1953.

“Guided by my Administration’s foreign policy of peace through strength, we remain steadfastly committed to safeguarding the Korean Peninsula and working together for the noble causes of safety, stability, prosperity, and peace,” the statement said, also noting that during his first administration, he pushed for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.