North Korea Keeps Calm

As I expected they would.

"N. Korean leader meets delegation from South; Group offered condolences on death of father" by Choe Sang-Hun  |  New York Times, December 27, 2011

SEOUL - Kim Jong Un, the newly anointed leader of North Korea, met yesterday with a private delegation of prominent South Koreans, his first face-to-face encounter with any visitors from the estranged South since assuming the top spot after his father’s death was announced a week ago.

The meeting, scrutinized for any hint of Kim’s intentions toward South Korea, came as the official North Korean media announced he had been appointed to the top post of the ruling party, another step in what appeared to be a choreographed sequence of events meant to show that he was assuming all the key positions held by his father, Kim Jong Il, the longtime ruler of the isolated North.

South Korea had said it would send no official mourners to Kim Jong Il’s funeral, which angered North Korea as a sign of disrespect. But Kim Jong Un’s meeting with the private delegation of mourners, which included the former first lady of South Korea and a top business woman, appeared to be cordial....

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"North Korea urges Seoul to reinstate pact for closer" by Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times  |   December 28, 2011

SEOUL - In its first interaction with vis­itors from South Korea since the death of its lead­er Kim Jong Il, North Korea called yes­ter­day for the imple­mentation of summit agree­ments that would have brought massive South Kore­an invest­ments had the South Kore­an lead­er, Lee Myung Bak, not scut­tled them.

Kim Yong Nam, pres­ident of the North Kore­an Parlia­ment and a cer­emoni­al head of state, ex­pressed the wish when he met Lee Hee Ho, the wid­ow of for­mer South Kore­an pres­ident Kim Dae Jung, accord­ing to Lee’s spokesman, Yoon Cheol Gu.

Lee’s 13-member del­egation returned home yes­ter­day af­ter vis­iting Pyongyang, where she ex­pressed con­do­lences to Kim Jong Un, the son and heir of Kim Jong Il. Her del­egation and a group led by Hyun Jeong Eun, chairwoman of Hyundai-Asan, which has busi­ness ties with North Korea, were the first from South Korea to meet with North Kore­an leaders since Kim Jong Il’s death on Dec. 17.

Kim Jong Il held summit meetings with Kim Dae Jung in 2000 and with his successor, Roh Moo Hyun, in 2007 that produced promises of large South Kore­an invest­ments, and hopes of eas­ing military ten­sions on the di­vided peninsula.

But that approach was re­v­ersed when Lee Myung Bak, a conservative, came to power in early 2008 and de­manded that North Korea first abandon its nucle­ar weapons program.   

Were Diebold machines used to count the votes?

North Korea has de­nounced Lee Myung Bak as a “national traitor’’ and de­manded that the summit agree­ments be re­instated. Its re­cent military provocations against South Korea were seen as efforts to win con­ces­sions.

Pyongyang’s de­mand concerning the summit agree­ments pro­vided an early sign that Kim Jong Un was not shifting the country’s ba­sic stance.

Both Lee Hee Ho and Hyun vol­unteered to vis­it Pyongyang to recip­rocate the North Kore­an del­egations that had vis­ited their husbands’ fu­nerals. Lee wished her husband’s biggest legacy - the “sunsh­ine pol­icy’’ of boost­ing eco­nom­ic exchanges with the North - would be revived.

Yeah, me, too!

Hyun, too, has reasons to hope for better ties be­tween the two Kore­as; Hyundai-Asan has suffered heavy losses from its invest­ments in the North’s Dia­mond Mountain resort, which has been shut down amid frosty inter-Kore­an relations.  

Yeah, good thing altruistic AmeriKa does nothing self-serving, 'eh?

For Kim Jong Un, abruptly thrust into the leader­ship fol­lowing his fa­ther’s death, two urgent tasks loom: consol­idating loyalty of the party and military elites, and en­g­i­neering an eco­nom­ic recovery, said Jonathan D. Pollack, a se­nior fel­low at the Brookings In­stitution.

That's odd; I was told by my media the unpredictable (what could be more stable and predictable than a dictatorship anyway?) guy would seek to lash out.

Yes­ter­day, North Kore­an TV footage showed Kim Jong Un courte­ously receiving Lee and Hyun when they came to pay their respects to his fa­ther lying in state in a Pyongyang mausoleum Monday. Kim Jong Il’s fu­neral is planned for today.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang lambasted the Lee govern­ment in Seoul for not sending an of­ficial del­egation for con­do­lences.  

Lee looking more and more like the a**hole, ain't he?

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Yeah, that's the harshest of war-mongering: let's trade

"North Korea begins new era with Kim Jong Un at the top" December 30, 2011|By Choe Sang-hun

SEOUL - North Korea publicly declared the young heir Kim Jong Un its supreme leader at a huge rally yesterday in Pyongyang that culminated with his ascent to the top of the hermetic Communist nation after nearly two weeks of national mourning for his father, Kim Jong Il.

A crowd of tens of thousands, most of them uniformed soldiers, packed the plaza named after Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, the North’s founding president, Kim Il Sung, and those gathered swore their allegiance to the dynastic transfer of power. The event, a memorial service for Kim Jong Il, who died Dec. 17, capped 13 days of mourning and introduced the era of his son.

“Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un is now supreme leader of our party, military, and people,’’ said Kim Yong Nam, president of the North Korean Parliament, who is considered the ceremonial head of state. “He inherits the ideology, leadership, courage, and audacity of Comrade Kim Jong Il.’’

Addressing the crowd, Kim Yong Nam also asked North Koreans to “solidify the monolithic leadership’’ of Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be in his late 20s.

In the past few days, North Korea has showered Kim Jong Un with the honorific epithets reserved, until now, for his father: “great leader,’’ “dear leader,’’ “peerless leader,’’ “the sun of the 21st century’’ and even eobeoi, the Korean word for parent, which North Korea has used only for Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung.

The ceremony yesterday was particularly symbolic of the son’s rise to top leadership: For the first time since his father’s death, he was facing a massive crowd of North Koreans alone - without his father.

Was his uncle there because we have been told he's the man behind the kid?

Although North Korea declared Kim Jong Un its top leader throughout the carefully choreographed ceremony, and in relentless pronouncements of the past week, he has yet to take any official titles, such as supreme commander of the 1.2 million-strong Korean People’s Army and general secretary of the Workers’ Party. Those are bestowed at meetings of top party and government representatives, most likely in the coming months, that in the past have been mere formalities....

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"N. Korea warns South to expect no change" December 31, 2011|By Choe Sang-Hun

SEOUL - By returning swiftly to its more typical bellicose form after two weeks of mourning, North Korea appeared to demonstrate a confidence that the transition of power in Pyongyang was going smoothly.  

WTF are you guys talking about?

But the strident rhetoric was also a sign that the regime, as it often has, was using perceived tensions with the outside world to rally its military and people behind the new leader during a sensitive transition....    

SOUND FAMILIAR, Amerikan?

Little is known about the leadership style and world views of Kim, who is believed to be in his late 20s and was unveiled as successor only in September last year. Educated in Switzerland as a teenager, the young heir did not carry some of the baggage of his father and grandfather, who had been often vilified in the rest of the world as brutal dictators and terrorists.  

Sounds like the Bush crime family, doesn't it?

But he also inherits a vast network of prison gulags, a widespread food crisis and an international dispute over its nuclear and long-range missile programs, which have brought trade embargoes....

Maybe he can commiserate with Obama. 

North Korea has remained confrontational toward South Korea ever since Lee came to power in 2008. Lee, a conservative, reversed his liberal predecessors’ policy of providing large amounts of aid and investment to the North as a way of building political reconciliation. He first wanted the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

I'm sorry, I must have gotten that backwards. Who initiated the confrontation there?

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"North Korea’s New Year’s message Sunday didn’t include the country’s routine harsh criticism of the United States....

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Related: N. Korea sets aggressive agenda for 2012

I wish I could remain calm in the face a lying, distorting, obfuscating, agenda-pushing pos media, but for the most part I just get angry and disgusted.  I guess that's why I am really not reading or posting much of it anymore.