hankyoreh

On the afternoon of Jan. 1

In his New Year’s address on Jan. 1, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made clear that he may take the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as an opportunity to fully restore inter-Korean relations. In contrast, he ratcheted up pressure against the US by mentioning the “nuclear button” even while denying that he means to carry out a preemptive strike. Kim appears to have designed the speech to put his confidence in the “completion of the state nuclear force” on full display while also showing his intention to use inter-Korean relations to bring about future dialogue.

“This year is a year of significance both for the north and the south of Korea as our people will celebrate the 70th birthday of the DPRK as a great auspicious event and there will be the Winter Olympic Games in the south…. We should melt the frozen north-south relations, thus adorning this meaningful year as a year to be specially recorded in the history of the nation,” Kim said during his personally delivered New Year’s address, which was broadcast by Korean Central Television at 9:30 am on Jan. 1.

In order to achieve this, Kim specifically mentioned his willingness to send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Olympics, hold meetings with South Korean officials, make a joint effort to ease military tensions and fully restore inter-Korean exchange. Kim said that “it’s time for North and South Korea to sit down together and seriously discuss the issue of improving inter-Korean relations among Koreans and to boldly pave the way for that.” He also expressed his willingness to fully open inter-Korean channels of communication by “paving the way for dialogue, contact and travel for anyone, including both the ruling party and opposition parties of South Korea, all kinds of organizations and individual figures.”

“The ‘parties concerned’ have returned to affairs on the Korean Peninsula after an absence of 10 years. By stressing inter-Korean relations in [the part of the speech about] foreign relations, Kim Jong-un basically indicated that he means to use inter-Korean relations as a stepping stone to improve foreign relations, including relations with the US,” said Kim Yeon-cheol, a professor at Inje University. During last year’s New Year’s address, Kim Jong-un did not make any concrete proposals about inter-Korean dialogue.

During the address, Kim defined nuclear weapons as a “powerful sword for defending peace” and emphasized that North Korea “must continue spurring on the work of manufacturing and deploying nuclear warheads and ballistic rockets whose force and reliability have already been definitely guaranteed in the areas of nuclear weapons research and the rocket industry.” This suggested that the North might refrain from additional nuclear weapon and missile tests for the time being while continuing its work to deploy more nuclear weapons and “qualitatively strengthen” them.

“North and South Korea must refrain from aggravating matters any more, and they must make a joint effort to ease military tensions and to create a peaceful environment,” Kim went on to say. The reference to a “joint effort” can be interpreted as a signal that, if South Korea and the US delay their annual military exercises, North Korea might also halt its nuclear weapon and missile provocations. North Korea has not carried out a nuclear weapon or missile test since test launching the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Nov. 29. If this situation continues until the end of March, for the duration of the Olympic truce, the “dual freeze” that China and Russia have suggested as a solution to the Korean Peninsula crisis would tentatively have lasted for almost four months. This suggests that a “window of opportunity” might open to shift from crisis to dialogue on the Korean Peninsula.

“The main task… this year is to put the national economy on a firmer independent and Juche basis and improve the standard of the people's living,” Kim said. Since this year marks the 70th anniversary of the North Korean regime’s establishment, Kim, who is entering his seventh year as North Korean leader, finds himself obliged to achieve concrete results in the economy and the standard of living. Kim’s focus was on economic independence, which appears to reflect the difficulties caused by the international community’s sanctions against the North. “Production lines at factories in light industry need to be upgraded to save labor and electricity; even more diverse and high-quality consumer goods made of domestic materials should be manufactured and supplied; and the local economy should be developed according to its unique characteristics with the provinces, cities and counties’ own materials and resources,” he said.

By Jung In-hwan, staff writer

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