North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister Kim Yo-jong
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister has condemned South Korea over its response to Pyongyang's latest projectile launch.
In a first-ever official statement issued under her name Tuesday, Kim Yo-jong, the first vice department director of the Central Committee of the North's ruling Workers' Party, said the South had no right to criticize the North's self-reliant exercises when Seoul also conducts its own military drills, sometimes jointly with the United States.
In the statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, she said Seoul's call for Pyongyang to halt its own drills only increases the North's "distrust, hatred and scorn" for South Korea.
Kim, however, said it's "somewhat fortunate" that it was not a "direct statement" of President Moon Jae-in whom she has met a few times.
On Monday, the North fired two projectiles into the East Sea in its first weapons tests this year.
Soon after, Cheong Wa Dae convened a meeting of security-related ministers who voiced "strong concern" about the continued joint strike exercise by the North's military and urged it to suspend acts that are "not helpful to efforts to ease military tensions on the Korean Peninsula."■
<Photo: Yonhap News>
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