Kim Yo Jong, who leads a department of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee and is the sister of the country's leader, has repeated that Pyongyang turned down South Korea's offer of humanitarian medical assistance, describing the gesture as "clowning". Her statement was issued through the North Korean state agency KCNA and reported by Interfax.
"The farce about the mine explosion and the clowning of support with medical supplies from the Republic of Korea are merely two sides of a coin cast by an innate habit of confrontation with our state," Kim Yo Jong said, according to the statement carried by KCNA.
In the same statement, the South Korean medical assistance offer was grouped together with the mine incident as expressions of the same hostile stance toward Pyongyang, per Interfax's account of the KCNA release.