North Korea attacks 'foolish politician
8:18AM GMT 30 Dec 2011
“We declare solemnly and confidently that the foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet group in South Korea, should not expect any change from us,'' the country’s powerful National Defence Commission, or NDC, announced in a statement read out in strident tones by a state television anchor on Friday.
North Korea propaganda routinely refers to South Korea as a “puppet” of the United States. The statement, the first on North-South relations since Kim Jong-il's memorial ceremonies ended, added that the North would never deal with the “traitor group” of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The conservative Lee ditched his two predecessors’ decade-long “Sunshine Policy” of pro-North engagement, and halted all tours to the joint North-South tourism resort at Mount Kumgang – a significant cash cow for Pyongyang – after the shooting of a South Korean tourist there by a North Korean soldier in 2008.
And following 2010’s North Korean naval and military attacks that killed 50 South Koreans, Lee halted most humanitarian aid and all high-level contact with the North. The NDC also criticised the Lee administration for not sending a national delegation to Kim Jong-il's funeral.
The two southern delegations to visit, composed of the widow of the late Kim Dae-jung, the South Korean president who held meetings with Kim Jong-il, and businesswoman Hyun Jeong-eun, whose firm Hyundai-Asan runs joint North-South commercial projects, were unofficial.
The news raised few eyebrows among South Korea’s community of North Korea watchers, a group which long ago learned to be cynical. “This is no surprise,” said Michael Breen, author of a Kim Jong-il biography. “North Korea is saying, ‘We stand as we are! Don’t mess with us.’” Even so, the rhetorical blast dashed some modest hopes.
“The statement is not a surprise, but it is a bit disappointing,” said Kim Tae-woo, president of the Korea Institute of National Unification, or KINU, in Seoul. “Now would have been the time for North Korea to make a new start.” Any expectations of slightly more liberal policy from the new leader – who briefly studied abroad, is believed to speak English and German, and is computer-savvy – are evaporating.
“Kim Jong-un has the knowledge to compare starvation in his country with the outside world,” Kim continued. “In that sense, he may think of reforms, but is surrounded by a status quo of forces.” Questions remain over who drafted the NDC statement. Kim Jong-un is not a member of the NDC, the military-centric body through which his father exercised power and from which he took his official title: “Chairman of the National Defence Commission.”
Although Jang Song-thaek, the strongman married to Kim Jong-il’s sister who is widely believed to be the “regent” to the young Kim, is a vice-chairman of the NDC, it is leaderless, leading some analysts to wonder if the hawkish body might become defunct. That now appears unlikely.
