SEOUL, South Korea ? North Korea announced on Friday that there would be no change in its policy under its new leader, Kim Jong-un, striking a characteristically hostile posture with a threat to punish President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea for ?unforgivable sins.?
The statement from the National Defense Commission, North Korea?s highest decision-making body, marked the country?s first official pronouncement to the outside world since the regime upheld Mr. Kim as its supreme leader on Thursday. His elevation came a day after the state funeral of his father, the long-time dictator Kim Jong-il.
?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,? said the statement. ?We will never deal with the traitor group of Lee Myung-bak.?
The commission said it was ?entrusted by the party, state and military? to issue the ?principled stance.? The statement was carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the regime?s official mouthpiece to the outside world.
It directed its wrath at President Lee, whose government refused to express official condolences to North Korea and allowed only two private delegations to visit Pyongyang during ?the great funeral of the nation.? It also criticized South Korea?s move to place its military on heightened vigilance and conservative South Korean activists? launching of balloons that carried leaflets into the North.
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. 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.
?By taking a confrontational stance with the external world, North Korea seeks to solidify its internal cohesion as it tries to establish Kim Jong-un as leader,? said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul. ?At the same time, it is pressuring the South to change its policy.?
?Don?t expect change from me!? was a ubiquitous slogan during the last dynastic transfer of power in the North, following the death of Mr. Kim?s grandfather, the country?s founding president, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Attributed to Kim Jong-il, the slogan ensured continuity by promising no change in policy from father to son and exhorting North Koreans to remain faithful to the dynastic rule.
The North Korean statement on Friday said: ?The world will witness how millions of North Korean people, who transformed sadness to courage and tears to strength under the pillar of the great leader Kim Jong-un, will achieve final victory.?
Little is known about the leadership style and world views of Mr. 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. 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.
North Korea has remained confrontational toward South Korea ever since Mr. Lee came to power in early 2008. Mr. 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.
North Korea had previously called Mr. Lee a ?traitor? and said it would not deal with him until he reinstated the old policy. It shelled a South Korean island in November 2010 and also was blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship earlier that year.
While focusing its hostility on South Korea, the North may hurry to improve ties with Washington, Mr. Kim, the North Korea expert, said. Before Kim Jong-il?s death, Washington and Pyongyang had been discussing a large shipment of humanitarian aid and a possible freeze on its uranium-enrichment program.
?The following one year will be a crucial time for Kim Jong-un to settle into power,? he said. ?Making people feel economically better is an important task for him.?
Indeed, the North, while criticizing the South?s leader, said it wanted to improve ties with the South, provided that South Korea follows through with its earlier agreements to provide aid and economic exchanges.
A North Korea in the throes of transition is creating thorny policy questions for Washington and Seoul.
When Kim Il-sung died in 1994, President Bill Clinton offered ?sincere condolences.? But South Korea offered none; instead, it arrested people who expressed condolences. That led to years of chill between the two Koreas.
Washington and Pyongyang moved quickly to strike a deal on freezing North Korea?s nuclear weapons program in return for fuel aid. (The deal later soured under Kim Jong-il.) But Pyongyang persistently sidelined Seoul in the nuclear talks, noting, among other things, its failure to express condolences for Kim Il-sung?s death.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=eb0040db75b16564a9f1c208e4a3aa00
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