Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was broadly involved in a statement blaming South Korea for the recent shooting of a South Korean official after she was angered by public discussion of North Korea’s human rights situation by UN officials, Daily NK has learned.
According to a Daily NK source in North Korea on Monday, Kim Yo Jong ordered the Central Committee’s United Front Department to write a public report that could highlight South Korea’s responsibility for the shooting on Oct. 28 – one day prior to the Korean Central News Agency report.
On Oct. 29, the KCNA wrote, “[T]he recent inglorious incident in the waters of the West Sea of Korea was the result of improper control of the citizen by the south side in the sensitive hotspot at a time when there are tension and danger due to the vicious virus sweeping the whole of south Korea.”
“Originally, [the authorities] were going to put a lid on the issue by sending a personal letter by Kim Jong Un through the United Front Department,” said the source. “But with the incident being discussed in the UN and [South Korea’s] conservative clique egging on the family [of the bereaved] to turn it into an international human rights issue, it seems the leadership couldn’t just sit by.”
The source added, “Lighting a fire with North Korea’s human rights issue is stabbing [the North Korean authorities] where it hurts the most.”
In fact, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomás Ojea Quintana, officially mentioned the shooting incident during his report to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on Oct. 23.
Quintana slammed the North, saying that North Korean troops shot dead the South Korean official and burned the body and that “[t]he incident seems to entail an unlawful and arbitrary killing of a civilian who was not exhibiting any imminent threat to the life of the security guards, which is in violation of international human rights law.”
But rather than attack the UN directly, it appears North Korea opted for a strategy of attacking the South Korean government, using as a pretext the so-called “confrontational act” of the South’s conservative opposition party.
In the KCNA report, the North Korea stated that “[T]he conservative forces of south Korea including the ‘People Power Party’ with the idea of confrontation with the fellow countrymen steeped into the marrows of their bones are working with bloodshot eyes to slander their fellow countrymen in the north under such rhetoric as ‘atrocity’ and ‘human rights abuses. They are also raising a hue and cry, going imprudent, in order to make the recent incident an opportunity for attaining their dirty political purposes.” However, no specific mention was made of which opposition party announcement or policy constituted the problem.
Meanwhile, news of the shooting of the South Korean official is spreading in North Korea. Another source in the country told Daily NK that “from the military units and soldiers’ homes around the West Sea Maritime Demarcation Line to civilians in North and South Hwanghae provinces, everyone knows this rumor [of the incident].”
“So many rumors are going around, like that a South Korean suffering from COVID-19 swam to the South, that he was already dead and floated away, or that he survived but was shot when he tried to escape,” said the source, describing what he had heard. “But many are saying that it was a bridge too far to treat a person as if they were trash.”
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