North Korea says South exercises could provoke war

SEOUL, Jan 24 (Reuters) - North Korea on Saturday denounced military exercises carried out by South Korea in early January as raising tensions that could lead to a war.

It was the latest in a series of recent rhetorical attacks on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his administration by the communist North, which analysts suspect is trying hard to grab the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama. [ID:nSEO301081]

"The Lee group's act of escalating the military provocations against the DPRK at a time when the inter-Korean confrontation is festering is as dangerous as adding fuel to the fire," the communist party's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by North Korea's KCNA news agency.

"Pursuing the wild ambition to militarily stifle the DPRK at any cost in league with foreign forces... has rendered the situation on the Korean Peninsula so tense that a war may break out any time," said the paper.

North Korea is formally called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

North Korea has been routinely denouncing military drills by the South as prelude to invasion, saying they spoil the prospects for nuclear disarmament talks.

The commentary came hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said the communist nation was committed to removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and wants to co-exist peacefully. [ID:nPEK10481]

Relations between the two Koreas -- still technically at war -- have chilled sharply since conservative Lee took office early last year with a promise to end the free-flow of aid to the North unless it moved to end its nuclear weapons programme.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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South Korea Orders Alert After North Korean Threat

By Heejin Koo

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- South Korea placed its military on alert after North Korea threatened “strong military retaliatory steps” over the government in Seoul’s confrontational policies.

South Korea ordered its army, navy and air force to “strengthen their alert status,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement yesterday. “No particular movements by the North Korean military have been detected,” it added.

The General Staff of the North Korean army made its announcement two days ago in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency. South Korea’s Defense Minister Lee Sang Hee and other leaders met immediately after the declaration and discussed their nation’s readiness, the military in Seoul said.

North Korea imposed border restrictions with South Korea at the start of last month, accusing the government in Seoul of taking confrontation “beyond the danger level.”

North Korea has repeatedly called South Korean President Lee Myung Bak a “traitor” and a “sycophant to the U.S.” The regime has demanded South Korea stop civic organizations from launching balloons loaded with so-called propaganda leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war as their 1950-1953 conflict ended in a truce and not a peace treaty. The two nations are separated by one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, with 1.7 million soldiers facing off each day.

Nuclear Program

North Korea, which tested a nuclear weapon in 2006, has rejected international demands that inspectors be allowed to remove samples from its Yongbyon reactor, the source of the regime’s weapons-grade plutonium. The refusal has stalled six- nation disarmament talks that also involve the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

President Lee today nominated Hyun In Taek, a political science professor, to replace Kim Ha Joong as South Korea’s unification minister. The post is subject to parliamentary approval.

Hyun “played a key role in devising the current administration’s policy on North Korea, and is regarded as being well versed in North Korean matters as well as on defense,” presidential spokesman Lee Dong Kwan told reporters today. He didn’t specify why Kim was being replaced.

To contact the reporter on this story: Heejin Koo in Seoul at hjkoo@bloomberg.net

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Mushrooms of Pyongyang

By Andy Jackson

Centuries ago in my undergraduate days, there was a popular T-shirt on my campus that roughly read ``I must be a mushroom, because they keep me in the dark and feed me cow manure.'' The actual expression was more vulgar: We were a potty-mouthed lot at my college.

The sentiment behind that slogan was common and universal: the belief that the powers that be are not telling us the whole truth and, worse yet, feeding us lies.

Back in America, I spent enough time around those mysterious ``powers that be'' to discovered a shocking truth; most politicians tell the truth most of the time. Even more shockingly, most politicians will at least try to implement the policies they championed in their election campaigns.

Politicians in democracies aren't generally truthful because they are called to a higher plain by their desire for public service. They tell the truth because they know that, in a democratic society with a vibrant political opposition and a free press, the truth will eventually come out and it would be damaging to their reputations and careers if they were found to have knowingly lied to the public.

Of course, things are different with our neighbors to the north.

North Korea has neither a legal political opposition nor a free press. Televisions and radios can only be set on official government channels. Those who are caught tampering with them to receive unauthorized broadcasts are severely punished.

That frees the Kim Jong-il regime to continue to keep the North Korean people ignorant of the outside world and to lie to them to without consequence. In true Orwellian fashion, a key to Pyongyang's continued domination of its subjects is careful control of what information they can and cannot have.

A few North Koreans used to get alternative information from South Korean government sources, but Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to end their official propaganda campaigns in 2004. Of course, by that point, the obvious difference in the level of development on the opposite sides of the DMZ made North Korean claims of superiority ridiculous to the point of self-parody, rendering their propaganda attempts in the South useless except for a few activists on the left. In that context the deal was less of mutual agreement than a concession from Seoul to Pyongyang.

The partial collapse of the central order in the country over the past decade has made state repression less efficient. Chinese and South Korean cell phones have been smuggled into the country, allowing for some communication with the outside world for those who can afford them. Missionaries and human rights groups have been able to work with North Korean refugees in China and even make incursions into North Korea itself.

While breakdowns in the North Korean system have made Pyongyang's control of information in the country less complete, much of the population, especially those who live far from the border with China, are still trapped behind the Kim Jong-il regime's wall of ignorance and lies.

One way to break through that wall has been the spreading of leaflets through the use of balloons launched from south of the DMZ or boats in the West Sea by private Korean citizens. Relatives of South Koreans abducted by North Korean agents and defectors from North Korea are the most active in the endeavor.

Suzanne Scholte, who was awarded the Seoul Peace Prize in September in recognition of her work on behalf North Korean human rights, is a strong supporter of the campaign, saying, ``There is nothing more powerful than North Koreans living in freedom reaching out to North Koreans living in slavery.''

The effectiveness of the campaign is evident in the reaction the Kim Jong-il regime has made to them. Pyongyang has threatened to downgrade or even shut down the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in retaliation. While the North Koreans are unlikely to close one of their few legal means of making hard currency, they could expel some South Korean managers and refuse to meet South Korean officials.

The threats caused the Gaeseong Industrial Complex Tenant Companies Association to ask that the leaflet balloon launches be stopped. The Hankyoreh, Korea's leading leftist newspaper, demanded that the government ``put an immediate end to the distribution of leaflets to North Korea.'' Other sources have also called for the government to step in and put a stop to the practice.

In response to those calls, Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong requested civic groups to refrain from distributing the leaflets but noted that the government has no legal basis for stopping them.

It is one thing for the South Korean government to end its official propaganda campaign as a concession to North Korea. It is another thing entirely for the South Korean government to become Pyongyang's flunky by applying North Korean censorship to South Korean citizens.

While it is unfortunate that Kim felt obliged to pay lip service to Pyongyang's demand to suppress South Korean citizens from providing alternative information to those in North Korea, the government is to be commended for so far not seeking some excuse to shut down one of the few sources of real sunshine for North Koreans.

Andy Jackson teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at andyinrok@lycos.com.

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Lee Myung-bak taps hardline minister

SENDING A SIGNAL: Hyun In-taek, who takes over at the Unification Ministry, helped draw up the policy that demands Pyongyang drop its nuclear arms ambitions

AGENCIES, SEOUL
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009, Page 5

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak yesterday named as his unification minister an architect of his hardline policy on North Korea two days after renewed threats by Pyongyang.

Hyun In-taek, who takes over at the Unification Ministry, is a conservative scholar who helped Lee draw up the policy that demands Pyongyang drop its nuclear arms ambitions in return for South Korea’s economic help.

Pyongyang has called Lee “a traitor to the nation” for his North Korea policy and for ending what had been a free flow of aid under his two liberal predecessors.

FRESH THREATS

North Korea said yesterday it did not engage in “empty talk” and had “guns and bayonets” aimed at its southern neighbor, heightening tensions.

North Korea’s military accused Lee on Saturday of plotting an invasion of the North and warned of strong military steps in retaliation and “an all-out confrontational posture.”

South Korea denied it was planning to invade and put its military on alert.

South Korea said yesterday it had detected no unusual moves by the North’s military.

STRATEGY

Analysts said Hyun’s appointment suggested Lee would stick to his hardline policy on the North.

Tensions between the two Koreas, which technically remain at war because their 1950 to 1953 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, have been escalating since Lee took office nearly a year ago pledging to get tough with the nuclear-armed neighbor.

The North since has cut off all ties and suspended several joint projects.

‘WAR MANIACS’

The North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper renewed the country’s warnings yesterday, saying it would “destroy and wipe out” invaders in “one strike” if South Korean “war maniacs ignite the fire of war.”

“The Lee Myung-bak group should bear in mind that our guns and bayonets ... are aimed at their throats,” the paper said in a commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. “We know no empty talk.”

Such threats are not uncommon and are typically issued through state-run media.

Saturday’s threats, however, were read by a uniformed army officer flanked by military flags — the first time since 1998 an officer has served as messenger rather than state media, South Korean officials said.

Despite the threats, Seoul’s deputy nuclear negotiator was on a five-day visit to North Korea — the highest-level visit to the North in a year.

South Korean nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook and his team were expected to leave Pyongyang later yesterday, officials said.

The visit is seen as an indication that Pyongyang has not abandoned a 2007 disarmament-for-aid pact signed by six regional powers.

South Korea, the US, Japan, Russia and China promised North Korea — which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006 — aid in exchange for dismantling its atomic program, but the disarmament process has been deadlocked for months over how to verify the North’s past nuclear activities.

Analysts say the North’s saber rattling is also a negotiating tactic aimed at Seoul and Washington ahead of US president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration today.

MESSAGE TO OBAMA

“North Korea wants to draw Obama’s attention,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University.

He said Pyongyang wanted to use the tensions with Seoul to make a case for its long-standing demand for diplomatic ties with Washington — the regime’s top foreign policy goal.

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