hankyoreh

Mar. 13. Despite threats from North Korea

By Park Byong-su, staff reporter

North Korea has issued its first criticism of Park Geun-hye since she was elected president of South Korea in Dec. 2012, though she was not named directly.

On Mar. 13, with military tensions already high between the two Koreas, North Korea’s Ministry of People’s Armed Forces released a statement by a spokesperson that appeared to indirectly criticize Park, saying, “This frenzy kicked up by the South Korean warmongers is in no way irrelevant with the venomous swish of skirt made by the one who again occupies the Blue House.” Pyongyang had not criticized Park since Dec. 2012, when she was still a presidential candidate for the Saenuri Party (NFP). At the time, the North challenged her North Korean policy in the form of open questions posed to Park.

“North Korea has avoided mentioning Park by name even as it heightens the sense of urgency by using provocative rhetoric amid a military standoff,” explained Yang Mu-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. “This suggests that Pyongyang still has some expectations about the North Korea policy of the new government.”

In 2008, when inter-Korean relations took a turn for the worse at the beginning of the Lee Myung-bak administration, North Korea refrained from naming Lee in their criticism until the end of March of that year.

“The Blue House keeps making the most inauspicious curses,” North Korea’s Ministry of People’s Armed Forces said in its statement. “How can they say that a country cannot be protected with weapons alone, and that countries that only concentrate on nuclear weapons and other weaponry are sure to collapse, when they themselves are calling on their own people to put all their energy into maintaining battle readiness?”

This was apparently aimed at comments made by Park when she attended the joint officer commissioning ceremony for the army, navy and air force on Mar. 8. In her remarks, she said, “Any country that ignores its starving citizens to focus solely on nuclear weapons and military power will inevitably collapse.”

The North Korean Ministry repeated their threats, saying, “The armistice agreement no longer has any force in Korea today, nor are we bound by the inter-Korean non-aggression pact. The only thing that remains is the righteous action of our army and our people, and merciless acts of retaliation.”

On the same day, North Korea’s state newspaper the Rodong Sinmun issued a rebuttal to the South Korean government’s position that it is impossible for North Korea to unilaterally nullify the armistice agreement, saying the South “has no right to talk about the ceasefire agreement.”

“For the South Korean puppet regime to pick a quarrel with us about our just decision to declare that we are nullifying the armistice agreement is an impertinent and rash move by pawns of the US in its colonial war,” the paper said. “Furthermore, the South Korean puppet regime was not a party to the signing of the armistice agreement.”

Nevertheless, North Korea has yet to do anything to indicate that it will make any particular provocation, such as a fourth nuclear test or launching another long-range rocket.

38 North, a website operated by the US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, reported that no signs of launch preparation were detected in recent satellite images of the Musudan Village Tonghae (East Sea) satellite launch site or the Dongchang Village West Sea satellite launch site.

“Based on the satellite images taken at the end of February, there are not yet any signs that North Korea is preparing for another underground nuclear test,” said Joel Wit, a former North Korean affairs analyst with the US State Department and who now runs 38 North.

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