From the Telegraph:
North Korea’s state media on Sunday warned that a “physical clash and war” have become a matter of time after the scrapping of a key military pact designed to reduce tensions with the South.
The 2018 agreement, which aimed to reduce the chance of accidental military escalation along the highly-militarised border, fell apart late last month after Pyongyang breached international sanctions by launching a military spy satellite.
Pyongyang has since claimed to have used the satellite to take images of the White House, Pentagon, US and British warships and military bases in South Korea and Japan....
The latest threats, carried by the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, cited a military commentator as saying “the physical clash and war on the Korean Peninsula have become a matter of time, not possibility.”
The unnamed commentator added that “any hostile act” would lead to the “total collapse” of South Korea, while justifying the North’s satellite launch as the country’s “legitimate and just right” as a sovereign state.
The North’s defence ministry warned over the weekend that any attack on its space assets by the United States would be “deemed a declaration of war.”
Well OK, but this is standard North Korean rhetoric. From the official Rodong Sinmun today:
A spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence of the DPRK released the following press statement "Any attack on space asset of the DPRK will be deemed declaration of war against it" on Saturday:
The brigandish nature of the U.S., which regards it as its main lever for realizing its hegemonic wild ambition to commit outrageous and unlawful military intervention against sovereign countries, has been brought to light more clearly, occasioned by the DPRK’s reconnaissance satellite launch.
An official concerned of the U.S. Space Command recently spouted rubbish hinting at a military attack on the DPRK’s reconnaissance satellite, saying that the U.S. can decrease the enemy country’s outer space operation capabilities by employing diverse "reversible and irreversible methods".
American military affairs experts comment that the U.S. Space Force can physically destroy not only opponent’s satellite and satellite earth station but also get rid of enemy state’s space force through jamming and virus-using cyber attack.
The U.S. Space Force’s deplorable hostility toward the DPRK’s reconnaissance satellite can never be overlooked as it is just a challenge to the sovereignty of the DPRK, and more exactly, a declaration of war against it.
And so on...and on....and on. Go there any day and you can read similar blood-curdling calls to arms against the brigandish enemy. Though admittedly I'm writing from far-away London: if I was in Seoul I might feel a little differently.
Still, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo doesn't seem particularly bothered. Their top stories today (apart from noting that fewer Koreans now make their own kimchi) concern an NYT article by Ross Douthat who suggested, rather undiplomatically, that Korea's population decline is happening faster than the ravages the Black Death wrought in Europe in the late middle ages, and this on North Korea's succession:
South Korea's National Intelligence Service has been fretting over the succession in North Korea and now believes leader Kim Jong-un's 10-year-old daughter Ju-ae is being set up as the next leader.
NIS chief Cho Tae-yong said Sunday that he believes Kim Ju-ae to be the heir apparent. When Ju-ae first appeared in public last year, officials here were highly skeptical that she could be the heir to the North Korean throne, but the propaganda machine has pulled out all the stops to build the little girl her own personality cult.
"Until recently we thought, 'How can Kim Ju-ae be the successor?,' but now we are at the stage of considering, 'Does it seem likely that Kim Ju-ae will be the successor?'" Cho told KBS.
A photo published in the North's official Rodong Sinmun daily last week shows Kim and Ju-ae wearing matching sunglasses and leather coats as she stands in front of him. Ju-ae has appeared in many photos in the state media and always appeared either next to or behind her father, but in this picture she is the main character.
It is unprecedented in the status-obsessed North to publish a photo with Kim Jong-un in the background.
I've written about this before, quoting a Daily NK article which doubted that a country so obsessed with male lineage and so unsympathetic to any idea of feminism would consider having a woman leader:
Senior cadres inside North Korea currently take it for granted that Kim’s successor will be his firstborn son. But because the successor must already be a fully capable adult at the time of his debut, he will be kept in complete secrecy until then, the source explained.
I'll stick with that for the moment, though it's possible of course that the eldest son isn't showing the necessary ruthless self-confidence. The daughter certainly looks the part.
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