hankyoreh

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

In response to comments made the previous day by Ministry of National Defense Kim Min-seok, spokesperson, that “North Korea needs to quickly go away,” North Korea said on May 13 that Kim will “pay a dear price for running his mouth.”

On Uriminzokkiri, a website run by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the North Korean body for relations with the South, an article by someone named Park Chong-yon denounced the remarks as “a grave provocation and a vain challenge that we will not overlook.”

“We will not tolerate for an instant the blind acts of Kim Min-seok, who rashly runs amok and spreads the most vicious of rumors while clinging to his delusions about unification through absorption, which are nothing more than a silly dream,” the article said. “It is our intention and our position that we will impose merciless punishment on those who dare to challenge and slander our system and our highest dignity, whoever and wherever they may be.”

While North Korea‘s reaction was harshly worded, it was a low-level response, since it was attributed to a private individual rather than conveying the official position of government authorities.

“This was a low-intensity response, since the criticism was focused on Kim, the spokesperson. However, it is common for North Korea to gradually increase the strength and intensity of its backlash according to changes in the broader situation,” said Kim Chang-soo, director of research at the Korea National Strategy Institute. “We will have to wait a little longer to see whether the North will make an additional response.”

During a press briefing on May 13, Kim explained that he was talking not about North Korea as a whole but rather about the behavior of the North Korean government.

“North Korea doesn’t respect human rights and it executes people without due process. It was in this sense that I was saying that the more than 20 million citizens of North Korea are suffering terribly and that we feel bad for them,” Kim said.

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