Must be the new leadership.
"US asks China to restrain N. Korea; Official works to maintain calm" by Choe Sang-Hun | New york times, January 06, 2012
SEOUL - The highest-ranking American official to visit northeast Asia since the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il urged China yesterday to help restrain the new leadership in the North from military provocations as it goes through a sensitive transition of power.
“We also urge China to make clear the importance of restraint by the new North Korean leadership,’’ M. Kurt Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, told reporters in Seoul after meeting Kim Sung Hwan, South Korea’s foreign minister....
Although there is doubt on Beijing’s ability to influence the North Korean regime, China remains Pyongyang’s last remaining major ally. North Korea’s economic dependence on China has deepened in recent years as it suffered more international sanctions following its nuclear and long-range missile tests. That dependence has magnified the potential role China might be able to play in stabilizing the Korean Peninsula if the transition in Pyongyang went awry.
One of the biggest concerns in the region is that Kim Jong Un - or whoever is engineering his rapid rise to top leadership of the North’s 1.2 million-member military and other key agencies of power - might initiate military provocations against South Korea to help consolidate internal unity.
You know what is not cool? War-provoking newspapers, especially when there has been no sign of such from the North!
Kim is believed to be in his late 20s. Whether he will be able to consolidate the kind of grip on power his father did - or how the power elites might behave if he fails to do so - remain topics of intense speculation and of potentially grave implications for the stability of the region....
SUCH CRAP!
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I wonder if these were the provocations they were talking about:
"North Korea announces prisoner release" January 11, 2012
SEOUL - North Korea said yesterday that it would release prisoners in its first special amnesty in seven years, a day after soldiers paraded in the capital of Pyongyang vowing to become “rifles and bombs’’ to defend the country’s new leader, Kim Jong Un. The military rally in Pyongyang on Monday and the special pardon, effective from Feb. 1, came as North Korea escalated a campaign to consolidate support for Kim....
For years, international human rights groups have said that up to 200,000 people are being held in political prison camps, and many more in other penal institutions....
In recent weeks, rallies have been held across North Korea, with factory workers and soldiers swearing loyalty to Kim Jong Un. On Monday, the rallies reached Pyongyang.
“We will build a ten thousandfold bulwark for protecting the supreme commander and become rifles and bombs to serve as Kim Jong Un’s first-line lifeguards and Kim Jong Un’s first-line death-defying corps,’’ Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho, chief of the general staff, said in a statement pledging the military’s allegiance.
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"North Korea open to talks on food aid, nuclear arms" January 12, 2012|By Chico Harlan
TOKYO - North Korea signaled a willingness yesterday to freeze its uranium enrichment program in exchange for “confidence-building’’ incentives from the United States, such as a suspension of sanctions and a resumption of food aid.
And a pledge not to invade or bomb.
The statement, carried by North Korea’s state-run news agency and attributed to a Foreign Ministry spokesman, was the first sign that the North’s new young leader, Kim Jong Un, might be open to a deal discussed last year and then put on hold after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
The statement had a chiding tone - it criticized Washington for linking a humanitarian issue with a security issue - but it had none of the bellicose rhetoric typical of Pyongyang’s foreign pronouncements....
You know, readers, the same kind of bellicose bulls*** I'm reading on a daily basis.
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