Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Kim Jong-il visited the home of KPA officer Um Bok-soon for dinner on Feb, 17th, in consideration of the fact that Um's entire family, including his wife and all his children, are active service members of North Korea's armed forces. North Korea's absolute leader continued his tour the next day with a visit to Keumsung Guards Unit 894 with Deputy Marshall Chun Jae-sun, and generals Hyun Chulhae and Park Jaekyung.

A central report session commemorating Kim Jong-il's 58th birthday were held in Pyongyang on Feb. 15th, presided by North Korea's Defense Minister Kim Ilchul, with ranking members of the Worker's Party, North Korea's government, and KPA in attendance. The participants pledged to 'place Kim Jong-il at the helm of the state and party for eventual establishment of our county as a superpower'.

North Korea responded to statements by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency concerning threats posed by North Korea's nuclear and chemical arsenal, with its usual barrage of caustic rhetoric, claiming that the director's statements were 'nothing but tenuous justification for development of a missile defense system intended for aggression, and attempts to crush us with military force'. In addition, North Korea stated that `Japanese apology and compensation for its Korean victims is a matter of priority in North Korean-Japanese relations, that cannot be deferred to a later date'.

North Korea was not reserving of words concerning inter-Korean relations and president Kim Dae-jung's interview with Japan's TBS, lambasting the sunshine policy as `simply an invasion by political means to disarm the North Korean state, and calling the president's request to the Japanese emperor's to visit Korea as an `attempt at our political and military murder in collaboration with the Japanese'.