hankyoreh

Jan. 1. (Korea Central News Agency Yonhap)

Son Won-je and Lee Je-hoon, Staff Writers

The most notable aspect of North Korea’s joint editorial for New Year was its advocacy of “relieving the state of confrontation” between North Korea and South Korea.

The joint editorial said the state of confrontation between North Korea and South Korea should be relieved quickly, and that the threat of war should disappear from the Korean Peninsula and both countries should protect peace. With this, North Korea has raised the need to relax military tensions in inter-Korean relations, which had gone to the brink of war due to their artillery attack in November on Yeonpyeong Island. The editorial stressed the need to restore inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation, saying that dialogue and cooperation projects should be actively pushed.

However, North Korea placed the primary responsibility for relieving the state of confrontation on South Korea, and demanded the Lee Myung-bak administration change its North Korea policy. It also said that if a war were to break out, it would bring nothing but nuclear disaster, and that it would not forgive in the least anyone who touches even a little North Korea’s dignity, socialist system, or land, air or seas.

In response, experts said that rather than revealing an active will to talk on the part of North Korea, the editorial revealed a conditional one, in which North Korea is demanding South Korea change its policy, and depending on Seoul’s decision, North Korea would chose its manner of action.

The Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) said the 2010 joint editorial strongly expressed North Korea’s will to push for improvement in inter-Korean relations and economic cooperation, but this year, they only called for relieving of the state of confrontation. KINU said that from the perspective of unification, North Korea’s initiative has shrunken in some ways.

Inje University Professor Kim Yeon-cheol interpreted the statement as meaning that while North Korea would leave the possibility of dialogue open, it would meet conflict with conflict and dialogue with dialogue, depending on if South Korea changes its policy.

The paper of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, the Choson Sinbo, which uniformly reflects North Korea’s claims, said through its joint editorial, North Korea has said the key issue is whether South Korea changes its policy, since North Korea has expressed its opinion regarding the need for inter-Korean dialogue.

Observers say that by bringing up the need for dialogue, if in principle, through its joint editorial, North Korea might hold off on preemptive military action for the time being while monitoring South Korea’s response. South Korea, however, is demanding as a prior condition that North Korea take responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan and shelling Yeonpyeong Island, so it is unknown whether the two countries will find a point of contact for dialogue.

A favorable factor, however, is that both sides share the need to improve inter-Korean relations in order to maintain their internal and external political situations. North Korea needs to manage its relations with South Korea in order to see results in the light industry sector and to enter dialogue with the United States over the nuclear issue. South Korea also needs to manage its relations with North Korea in order to prepare for changes in the international situation, such as a restart in the six-party talks, and to achieve stable economic growth.

The North Korean editorial’s domestic focus is on “improving the life of the people.” This year is “the Year of Light Industry”: typical of this is that light industry was named the “major front in the general offensive of this year.” The title of the editorial was “Bring about a decisive turn in the improvement of the people’s standard of living and build a great, prosperous and powerful country by accelerating the development of light industry once again this year!” This is the second year straight that North Korea has highlighted living standards in the title of its editorial, the first time since Kim Jong-il took power in 1998.

This is proof that North Korea sees stabilizing the standard of living and earning public trust as urgent political tasks in order to build the successor system around his son Kim Jong-un, who has virtually been named successor, ahead of 2012, which has been designated the “Year of Throwing Open the Gate to Becoming a Prosperous and Powerful Country.”

The North Korean authorities, however, did not put forward a new economic policy that would improve the people’s standard of living in this editorial, either. Instead, it stressed that “the principle of self-reliance should be applied thoroughly” and “working people’s organizations should concentrate their efforts on ideological education for enlisting the mental strength of their members, and intensify a variety of mass movements including socialist emulation and shock-brigade movement.”

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