North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is no longer interested in foreign aid or external support to handle his country’s humanitarian problems, a former senior DPRK diplomat said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Global Korea Forum in Seoul, Ri Il Kyu, a counselor at the DPRK Embassy in Cuba until his defection last year, said Kim believes the DPRK already extracted most of the aid it could hope to receive from the EU, U.N. system, nongovernmental organizations and nations like the U.S. and Japan.

Once foreign aid dramatically declined, Kim stated that the DPRK would “live well under my leadership…(and)