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Weekly on North Korea

ROK Ministry of Unification

1. External Affairs

a. On the occasion of the 92nd birthday of the late leader Kim Il-sung that falls on April 15, North Korea since late March has repeatedly propagandized various events marking the occasion through its media outlets.

b. North Korea held a "central report session" to mark the 11th anniversary of the installation of Kim Jong-il as chairman of its National Defense Committee. The meeting was held at the "April 25 House of Culture" on April 8 with the attendance of senior leaders from the party, the military and the administration, along with compatriots from abroad.

c. On the occasion of the 92nd birthday of the late leader Kim Il-sung, North Korea will hold the 19th Central Festival for Science and Technology sometime between late April and early May, according to a report by the Central Broadcasting Station April 4.

Participating in the central festival will be four hundred scientists and technicians who were rated as "excellent" during the 19th Regional Festival for Science and Technology held at 4,000 places nationwide since February.

d. North Korea propagandized that factories and enterprises in various sectors completed this year's first-quarter People's Economic Plans around the end of March.

e. The practitioners of Buddhism and workers in the archeological sector from South and North Korea held a ground-breaking ceremony in Mt. Geumgang for the construction of Sin-gye Temple.

f. Chairman Kim Jong-il, accompanied by generals Li Myeong-su, Hyeon Cheol-hae and Pak Jae-gyeong and first vice director of the central party committee Li Yong-cheol, visited the "July 18 Cow Pasture" being managed by military unit 580.

g. For the first time, North Korea set up a software company in Shenyang, China, and began to develop multimedia/apparatus operation program and to run a homepage dubbed "Between Our People" on March 25, according to the newspaper Heukryeonggang Sinmun on April 5.

2. Relations with South Korea

a. Through media reports on the Ninth Inter-Korean Reunion of Separated Families, North Korea propagandized that northern-side family members appealed to their southern relatives to positively join the campaign to achieve reunification under the banner of the June 15 Joint Declaration and boasted of their happy lives in North Korea.

b. In connection with the passage by the National Assembly of the presidential impeachment motion, North Korea criticized it as an anachronistic revolt by the U.S. and South Korean conservative forces to block the wave for ¡°self-reliance, democracy and unification,¡± according to the Pyongyang Broadcasting Service on April 6 and 7.

c. In connection with the death of Jeong Soon-deok, a long-term prisoner in South Korea, who the North said refused to disavow her communist ideology, North Korea claimed that her death was a political assassination, not a death of illness. They also demanded to repatriate the remaining long-term prisoners who refused to renounce their communist ideology, in accordance with their wishes and the June 15 Joint Declaration.

3. External Affairs

a. In connection with the U.S. announcement on the planned deployment of an Aegis-equipped destroyer in the East Sea and US-Japan joint military exercises, as well as the Los Angeles Times report on Pentagon's '1-4-2-1 defense strategy,' it denounced those steps as a war plot to overpower North Korea militarily.

b. With regard to the discussions on the creation of a 'Northeast Asia Security Forum' raised in the process of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, North Korea claimed that the time for such discussions is not mature in view of the increasingly hostile policies of the U.S. and Japan. It also pledged that it would go all-out to strengthen its military capabilities for self-defense.

c. In an address during the U.N. Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization, a North Korean delegate asserted that the United Nations Command (in South Korea) should be disbanded since it is nothing but an invasion tool to realize strategic objectives of the U.S. and an unlawful and anachronistic organization, according to the Central Broadcasting Station and Pyongyang Broadcasting Service on April 5.