hankyoreh

according to the NIS

Pyongyang is ramping up its criticisms of President Park Geun-hye for her allegations that North Korean Minister of the People’s Armed Forces Hyon Yong-chol was purged.

The development casts renewed doubts on expectations of a thaw in inter-Korean relations amid increasingly unclear prospects of joint events for the 15th anniversary of the June 15 Joint Declaration of 2000. An anticipated May visit to North Korea by Kim Dae-jung Peace Foundation chairperson Lee Hee-ho has been postponed. Lee is the widow of former President Kim Dae-jung (in office from 1998-2003).

A statement delivered on May 18 by a spokesperson for North Korea’s national alliance of labor groups heaped harshly worded criticisms on the South Korean President.

“Recently, Park Geun-hye has been coming out with her silly sleepwalker’s dreams about how we are going to collapse soon because of some ‘instability’ in our system,” the statement said. “Meanwhile, she’s yelling about how she’s ‘not going to tolerate’ North Korea’s human rights issues anymore.”

The statement went on to single out Park’s family history for particularly harsh invective.

“Every fiber of Park Geun-hye’s being is filled with the twisted character of someone who has lived a solitary life since losing her mom and dad to tragic early deaths and a fearsomely writhing lust for power to indiscriminately crush others,” it said.

Park previously said on May 15 that many South Koreans were “stunned to learn of North Korea‘s recent provocative behavior and the extreme politics of terror operating within North Korea.”

“Before any real inter-Korean dialogue happens, we need to keep letting North Korea know that we take its human rights issues very seriously,” she said at the time.

Her remarks made renewed mention of National Intelligence Service (NIS) revelations on May 13 about reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had Hyon executed by an anti-aircraft gun sometime around Apr. 30 for disrespect and disloyalty. North Korea’s response appears to be a stronger counterattack to the perceived public criticism against its “supreme dignity.” The NIS’s unconfirmed intelligence reports, and Park’s criticisms based on them, met with Pyongyang’s objections in a chain reaction of escalating inter-Korean tensions.

North Korea’s blunt and harshly worded criticisms of Park could be a reflection of the internal mood in Pyongyang, where advocates of conciliation with Seoul are unable to speak out due to Kim‘s politics of terror.

“Senior officials feel compelled to compete to show their loyalty under threat of execution, and only the people who voice hard-line opinions on the South survive,” said one North Korea expert.

“As a result, policy rationality has declined and North Korea has started engaging in reckless behavior with the outside world.”

The escalating anti-Seoul rhetoric in the North, combined with the increasingly unclear prospects for civic exchange, is casting a deepening chill on inter-Korean relations.

“The administration strongly denounces the unspeakable ad hominem attack against our head of state, the insensible denunciations, and the slanders made through government-run media,” said Ministry of Unification spokesperson Lim Byung-chul.

Cheong Seong-chang, head of Unification Strategy Studies department at the Sejong Institute, was pessimistic about the prospects of the situation recovering.

“Inter-Korean relations are basically over for the year,” he said. “We need to give up hope of improving ties and prepare for the potential military clash that the heightening inter-Korean tensions could lead to.”

Other analysts noted that Pyongyang may actually have muted its own rhetoric by having the statement delivered through the national association of labor groups, which is relatively low in the North Korean hierarchy.

“The fact that North Korea had the statement made not by one of its key bodies for South Korea relations like the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, but by a group, the national association of labor groups, that hasn’t ever released a statement before shows that it has no intention of ruining inter-Korean relations,” said one administration source.

University of North Korean Studies professor Yang Moo-jin echoed the argument.

“The low stature of the people denouncing the South could actually be seen as evidence that North Korea is looking to change its tactics and open up dialogue with the US or South Korea,” he said.

By Kim Ji-hoon, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]