The presidential office says the government will consistently take the necessary actions to bring about peace on the Korean Peninsula, in response to a statement from Pyongyang flatly rejecting Seoul’s overtures. 

The top office expressed its position on Sunday after Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said the North has no interest in any proposals from South Korea. 

The presidential office said it is “taking note” of North Korea’s position, saying it realizes just how high the wall of distrust between the two Koreas has grown due to years of hostility and confrontation, while emphasizing that peacebuilding is the firm philosophy of the Lee Jae Myung administration. 

The top office then said the government will do what is necessary to make the Korean Peninsula free of hostility and war. 

Kim Yo-jong’s recent statement, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency, was the first directed at South Korea by a senior North Korean official since the launch of the Lee government.

In it she said that whatever policy is established in Seoul and whatever proposal is made, North Korea is not interested and will not be sitting down with South Korea.

Commenting on Lee’s decisions to suspend loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts at the inter-Korean border and ban the launch of anti-Pyongyang leaflets, Kim Yo-jong said there is no reason for the North to praise South Korea for turning back from what it should never have done in the first place.