{"id":131451,"date":"2026-08-25T11:28:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T11:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/131451\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T11:28:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T11:28:05","slug":"kim-jong-uns-powerful-sister-says-she-is-completely-unaware-if-he-contacted-trump-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/131451\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Jong Un\u2019s powerful sister says she is \u2018completely unaware\u2019 if he contacted Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said she is \u201ccompletely unaware\u201d whether her brother communicated with US President Donald Trump, as Trump claimed this week.<\/p>\n

Kim, one of North Korea\u2019s top officials, acknowledged that her brother has a \u201cgreat relationship\u201d with Trump<\/a> and \u201cpersonally has good memories and feelings\u201d for him. But in a statement released on state media Wednesday, she stopped short of confirming Trump\u2019s claim of recent contact.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters Monday that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation, shortly after the president demanded a sudden reduction in joint military drills<\/a> with South Korea, a close and long-standing US ally.<\/p>\n

Trump did not elaborate on the contact. He added Wednesday that he intends to meet<\/a> Kim later this year, but he didn\u2019t offer details and would not say whether he has exchanged any letters with North Korea\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n

In her statement, Kim Yo Jong said of the reported \u201ccommunication\u201d between Trump and her brother: \u201cI am not aware of it at all, and perhaps it may be the only thing I do not know as regards the foreign policy of our supreme leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s statement is illuminating because she is one of her brother\u2019s top lieutenants and a close confidant, routinely pictured alongside the North Korean leader and someone who often delivers important statements on behalf of the often secretive and opaque rgime.<\/p>\n

Joint military drills have long irritated North Korea, and Kim Yo Jong said reducing them does not change \u201cthe provocative and offensive nature of them,\u201d even though the US and South Korea frequently emphasize their defensive nature. Scaling the drills back should not be seen as \u201cmeasure of goodwill,\u201d Kim added.<\/p>\n

The annual joint exercises are usually scheduled to run for 10 days, but this year\u2019s will last only five, at Washington\u2019s request. They are designed to adapt to North Korea\u2019s evolving capabilities and incorporate training to counter drones, GPS disruption and cyberattacks, a spokesperson for US Forces Korea said last week.<\/p>\n

Analysts have warned that by scaling down war games with South Korea, Trump risks working against his own stated goal of having Seoul assume more responsibility for its own defense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Contained within the military exercises is training to give South Korea something it hasn\u2019t had since the Korean War began in 1950: wartime operational control of the combined South Korea-US forces on the peninsula, analysts point out.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a key goal for both countries. Once Seoul shows it can take on that burden, Washington can take a backseat in any future conflict, providing some firepower but letting South Korea assume most of the responsibility and cost of its defense.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s demand to scale back the drills \u2013 which were months in planning \u2013 came on the first day they joint exercises began.<\/p>\n

Publicly, South Korea\u2019s President Lee Jae Myung has welcomed Trump\u2019s request, and reiterated that he supports dialogue with North Korea and wants to take more responsibility for its own defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sympathize with President Trump\u2019s determination and effort to create conditions for dialogue to establish peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, even if it means scaling back the recent South Korea-US joint military exercise and field training exercises, and we pay tribute to that decision.\u201d Lee said on X late Wednesday.<\/p>\n

He added he \u201cfully agrees\u201d with Trump that South Korea \u201cshould take responsibility itself of security on the Korean Peninsula while building sufficient capability to independently defend the peninsula by rapidly increasing defense spending to achieve a defense expenditure of 3.5 percent of GDP.\u201d<\/p>\n

When calling for these exercises to be reduced, Trump cited his positive relationship with Kim Jong Un, a longtime US adversary, as well as Seoul\u2019s lack of assistance for the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get along with him,\u201d Trump told reporters Wednesday. \u201cAnd you know what? The fact that I get along with him \u2014 that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump met with Kim three times for denuclearization talks during his first term, but those talks were ultimately unsuccessful, and North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program has only grown since.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, South Korea defense minister said he estimates North Korea now possesses between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads, a range significantly higher than Trump\u2019s recent assertion that Pyongyang has \u200b57 nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Trump took similar steps to scale back joint operations with South Korea during his first term. In March 2019<\/a>, the two countries announced that their annual large-scale exercises would be reconfigured and take a reduced form.<\/p>\n

This post has been updated with additional developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said she is \u201ccompletely unaware\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[519,74,141,31,34,177,3190,1332,4196],"class_list":["post-131451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-asia","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-leader","tag-trump-administration","tag-us","tag-us-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}