Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Kim Jong-il was back on the inspection trail after January 24th, this time to land reclamation project site in North Pyongan province, followed by a visit to KPA Unit 1158, factories in the province, and KPA Unit 667, and providing his usual on-the-spot guidance for the workers and soldiers. Meanwhile, prime minister Hong Sung-nam and party secretary Kim Kinam presided over the National Convention of Agricultural Officials held at the People's Palace of Culture, urging creation of a superpower through increasing agricultural production.

North Korea responded to US development of missile defense systems with its usual threatening rhetoric, stating that 'US development of missile defense systems will be met with our responses in kind', adding that their decision to stop test-firing of it missiles were `temporary at best'. The North also declared that `the US and Japan must relinquish their strategies aimed at our ideological disintegration in the deceitful guise of appeasement such as calls for normalization or dialogue, as a precondition to any real improvements in relations'.

In an unrelenting propaganda assault, North Korea blasted president Kim Dae-jung's proposals for a formation of an economic commonwealth at his New Year's press conference `an attempt to disguise its intrinsic disunity', and called the ROK and US `rampaging warmongers scheming together for an invasion north', in reference to a joint ROK-US naval exercises to be conducted in February.