Alex Brandon/AP; Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
- Kim Jong Un's sister warned the US to "refrain from causing a stink at its first step."
- The warning comes as the White House confirmed it's been trying to reach the leader with no reply.
- A Biden official said they'd been trying to get in touch with Pyongyang since Mid-February.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, criticized ongoing military drills in South Korea and warned US President Joe Biden to stay away, rebuffing the administration's diplomatic efforts, Reuters reported.
"We take this opportunity to warn the new US administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land," Kim said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA. "If it wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step."
This comes after White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that the Biden Administration had reached out to Pyongyang.
"We obviously have a main – a series of – a number of channels, as we always have had, that we can reach out through," Psaki said in a press briefing Monday.
A senior administration official previously told several news outlets that the White House had been reaching out to the country since mid-February with no response in an effort to "reduce the risks of escalation."
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King's College London, told Reuters that the comment may be a way to get North Korea seen as a top priority on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's visit to Asia this week when they have foreign policy and security talks with Japan and South Korea.