North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ’s influential sister has issued a sharply worded warning to South Korea’s new liberal government after drones were reportedly flown from the South early this month.

Calling the country a “gang of hooligans”, Kim Yo-jong used the recent drone incursions to reinforce Pyongyang’s claim that inter-Korean relations were irreparably hostile and blunt Seoul’s renewed push for reconciliation.

Kim, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and its de facto spokeswoman, on Sunday condemned what she described as repeated South Korean drone intrusions into the North’s airspace.

“This latest incident of South Korean drones intruding once again greatly helped us to solidify an even clearer image of South Korea as a gang of hooligans and a trash collective,” she said.

It marked the first time such crude language has been directed at Seoul since the liberal administration of President Lee Jae Myung replaced the conservative government of impeached president Yoon Suk-yeol in June last year.