Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Speech

Excerpt:

It is easy to imagine the answers North Korea wants to hear from President-elect Park, but it may be hard for Park to provide positive answers to all of these questions without defying articulated principles or alienating her conservative base.

And I would add it would be hard for Madam Park t provide the answers the regime wants without undermining the security of the ROK which is always the most dangerous thing when dealing with north Korea.  The ball still remains in the regime's court.  We hear only words and the concrete actions by the regime throughout history to not offer any evidence that the words of the New Year' Day speech will be backed by positive actions in the north.

V/R

Dave

Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Speech

http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/05/deciphering-kim-jong-uns-new-years-message/?all=true

January 05, 2013

By Scott A. Snyder

While many made note of a recent speech by N. Korea's leader, it maybe what Pyongyang wants to hear from S. Korea that might be of real interest.

An annual ritual of North Korea’sis the release of a lengthy propaganda statement on New Year’s Day that serves as guidance and provides a sense of priorities for the coming year.  Under Kim Jong-il, the statement came in the form of a joint New Year’s Day editorial by three leading news organs, but Kim Il-sung gave the speech himself.  Kim Jong-un does not appear to have the same fear of public speaking that his father apparently had, so he gave the speech, which was broadcast on North Korean television, and is available through YouTube (see below). Even though Kim is not afraid to read a speech in front of a camera, the echoing of the room, despite North Korean cutaways to a building accompanied by an applause track, suggests that Kim did not present the speech to a live audience. Curious.

The speech has been panned as a repetition of the same old, same old, here and here, while it was greeted in the South Korean media as potential evidence of North Korean openness to an olive branch from Seoul.  I see the speech as a reiteration of North Korea’s basic conditions for stabilizing the inter-Korean relationship with a conservative South Korean leader, namely, an insistence that “all the compatriots in the north, south and abroad should launch a dynamic struggle to carry out to the letter the June 15 Joint Declaration and October 4 Declaration, great reunification programs common to the nation in the new century and milestones for peace and prosperity.”

In the coming weeks, North Korea will carefully watch the Park Geun-hye transition team and the new administration’s initial articulation of policies toward the North.  The criteria by which the North is likely to judge whether it wants to do business with Park Geun-hye was revealed in a series of questions from aDecember 1st article entitled “Park Geun-hye’s Deceptive Commitments Regarding ‘Policy toward North’ Censured.”

The questions are as follows:

(Continued at the link below)

http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/05/deciphering-kim-jong-uns-new-years-message/?all=true

NightWatch: north Korea

Mr. McCleary highlights the January 2d message from the north Korean National Defense Commission which may have been written prior to Madam Park's election.  However, I disagree with Mr. McCleary's assessment that this shows that the NDC disagrees with Kim Jong-un.  I do of course think vigilance is warranted as always but I do not think there is the split between the military and Kim Jong-un that Mr. McCleary and others think exists. Mr. McCleary's continued assessment that there are factions within the senior ranks of the regime continue to surprise me because I think that Kim Jong-un has effectively consolidated power.  But I am happy that Mr. McCreary has identified the NDC statement because of course the mainstream media has not reported on it very heavily because it counters what many people want to believe, e.g., that north is going to change and be less hostile toward the South.  While these statements seem incompatible to us, I think it is not unusual for two different statements to be made as I think the regime has a better understanding of target audiences than we think.  Kim Jong-un's may be for external consumption but the NDC is focused internally and the regime understands that the NDC statement will not generate much external or international review because the international community would rather hope for the positive.  This of course leads to analysis that there is a split in the leadership of the regime and I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the regime works (and survives).

V/R

Dave

NightWatch

For the night of 4 January 2013

North Korea: A day after leader Kim Jong-un delivered his New Year's address urging reunification and conciliation, the National Defense Commission (NDC) published a very different message. On 2 January a spokesman for the most powerful organ of state in North Korea said,

"We should raise our awareness of the confrontation commotions against fellow countrymen happening at the beginning the new year. Nothing but war will be incurred by confrontation against fellow countrymen. This is an historical lesson that the past North-South relations clearly show us."

The statement contained three resolutions by the commission which reprise long standing warnings.

Comment: The most interesting feature of the NDC statement is that it communicates a threatening tone that is precisely opposite that conveyed by Kim a day later. The obvious message is that Kim does not speak for the NDC.

The second prominent feature is that it excoriates former President Lee, but does not mention newly elected President Pak. The obvious inference is that the NDC statement was canned before the elections in the Republic of Korea.

The NDC statement was not updated by the results of the South Korean presidential elections before release. The North's media coordination is awry. The fact that the National Defense Commission issued a statement of defense policy in its own right and independent of Kim is ominous because it means that the Kim family, the Chang family and the Party bureaucrats do not have the final say on matters of defense policy. This apparent bifurcation justifies increased vigilance by the allies.

(Continued at the ink below)

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000003.aspx