North Korea warns of stronger response to US ‘hostility’ as Kim Yo Jong rejects dialogue
Kim Yo Jong has warned Washington of a stronger North Korean response to its ‘hostile policy’ and dismissed the FBI’s claim that Pyongyang stole over $6 billion from Binance.
North Korea has warned the United States that it will mount a stronger response to what it calls Washington's 'invariable hostile policy', in a sharply worded statement from Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, carried by the state news agency KCNA on Wednesday.
'In the present reality when new records are being set in the implementation of the US hostile policy toward the DPRK, it is natural that new records should be created in our reflective counteraction,' Kim Yo Jong was quoted as saying, using the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
The warning follows a furious North Korean reaction to an announcement by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that Pyongyang was behind the theft of more than 6 billion dollars in cryptocurrency from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Kim Yo Jong rejected the accusation outright in an earlier statement, and returned to it in her latest remarks.
'We do not regard the Binance hacking incident as any accidental and sudden case or isolated private scheme, but as an extension of Washington's invariable hostile policy toward the DPRK,' she said, accusing the United States of exploiting the case for political and strategic gain.
The statement also closed the door, for now, on renewed diplomacy. Kim Yo Jong said North Korea saw 'no need' to sit down with Washington, describing American officials as 'unreliable and hostile persons who refuse to abandon their policy of confrontation'. She added that the abandonment of that policy by the United States was 'a major premise and key to solving all problems'.
'To the hostile signals that the United States continuously sends, we do not know how to respond otherwise,' she said, without specifying what countermeasures Pyongyang might take.
At the same time, her remarks left a narrow opening. Dialogue with the United States 'remains an option for peace', she said, but stressed that it was not necessarily tied to North Korea's national interests. 'The choice for peace includes dialogue of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us,' she said, according to Yonhap news agency.
The exchange comes against a backdrop of rising tension on the Korean peninsula. On Monday, North Korea test-fired strategic cruise missiles fitted with a new cluster-munition warhead, according to KCNA, in the latest display of its weapons capabilities. Kim Yo Jong also pointed to a recent meeting of the top diplomats of South Korea, the United States and Japan, at which they reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea, and to joint military drills, as further examples of hostility.
Her rejection of dialogue arrives amid speculation about a possible summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un later this month. A senior South Korean official told reporters last week that Seoul saw little chance of such a meeting for now, and the latest statement appears to confirm that assessment.
The FBI's Binance allegation has become the newest flashpoint in a relationship that has swung between summits and threats for years. Washington has long accused North Korean hackers of stealing cryptocurrency to fund the regime's weapons programmes, an accusation Pyongyang has consistently denied.
What happens next is uncertain. Kim Yo Jong's warning of 'new records' in counteraction is deliberately vague, and could cover anything from further missile tests to sharper rhetoric. For Washington, Seoul and Tokyo, the statement is a reminder that, for all the talk of a possible summit, Pyongyang is signalling confrontation rather than engagement — and that its patience with American pressure has, in its own telling, run out.
More in News
Photo: The building of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara (file image)
NewsTurkey's parliament set to ratify Makkah defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as Houthi attacks mount
Turkey's parliament is set to ratify the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose collective defence clause mirrors NATO's Article 5, committing NATO's second-largest army to Riyadh's defence.
Photo: File:Johannesburg-city-skyline-night.jpg
NewsSouth Africans vote in municipal elections as anger over services threatens fresh ANC losses
South Africans are voting in municipal elections on Wednesday, with anger over corruption, crime and failing public services threatening to inflict fresh losses on the ruling African National Congress.
Photo: Parched, cracked earth during a drought (file image)
NewsUN warns world is not ready as climate adaptation funding falls far short of $305bn annual need
UNEP’s 2026 Adaptation Gap Report finds developing countries will need about $305 billion a year by 2035 to adapt to climate change, while international public finance reached only $28.2–31.7 billion in 2024.