Kim's sister rejects US offer of dialogue, vows more satellite launches

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday dismissed US calls for a return to diplomacy and lambasted condemnations of the North's recent spy satellite launch, vowing more launches in violation of UN bans.

During a UN Security Council meeting earlier this week, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called the North's satellite launch a "reckless, unlawful" action that threatens its neighbours. But she reiterated the US offer for dialogue without any preconditions, saying North Korea "can choose the timing and topic".

Kim's sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, rejected the US overture and threatened more satellite and other weapons launches.

"The sovereignty of an independent state can never be an agenda item for negotiations, and therefore, (North Korea) will never sit face to face with the US for that purpose," Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media.

"(North Korea) will continue to make efforts to develop everything belonging to its sovereign rights and continue to exercise the sovereign rights, enjoyed by all the member states of the UN, in a dignified manner without being restricted in the future, too," she said.

Multiple UN Security Council resolutions ban North Korea from performing any launches using ballistic technology, such as satellite liftoffs and missile tests. But the North has argued it has sovereign rights to launch spy satellites and test-flight ballistic missiles to cope with what it calls US-led military threats. It views major US-South Korean military drills as invasion rehearsal and often reacts with its own weapons tests.

Kim Yo Jong said the UN Security Council meeting last Monday was convened at "the gangster-like demand of the US and its followers". She said Thomas-Greenfield must first explain why US strategic assets have frequently appeared at South Korean ports.

She apparently referred to the increasing temporary deployments of powerful US military assets like aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines in line with an earlier US-South Korean agreement to boost their defence against North Korea's evolving nuclear threats.

In 2018, Kim Jong Un and then US president Donald Trump launched high-stakes diplomacy on the future of the North's advancing nuclear arsenal. But their summit diplomacy fell apart a year later in 2019 due to wrangling over international economic sanctions on North Korea. Kim Jong Un has since focused on expanding and modernising his nuclear arsenal, a move experts say he thinks would give him greater leverage to win US concessions in future negotiations.

Spy satellites are among many high-tech weapons systems that Kim Jong Un has publicly pledged to introduce. He said North Korea needs several spy satellites to better monitor its rivals' moves and bolster the precision-guided missile strike capability against enemy targets.

After two failed launch attempts earlier this year, North Korea claimed to put its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit last week. The North has since claimed its "Malligyong-1" spy satellite was transmitting imagery with space views of key sites in the US and South Korea, such as the White House and the Pentagon.

Outside experts still doubt whether the North Korean satellite can produce militarily meaningful high-resolution imagery.

The satellite launch deepened animosities between North and South Korea, with the rivals taking respective hostile military steps along their heavily fortified border in breach of their previous tension-reduction deal.