North Korea Weekly (March 17-23, 2008)
ROK National Intelligence Service
【Inside North Korea】
o On March 20, North Korea’s Pyongyang Broadcasting Service (PBS) said, “This year, numerous plants and companies in power, coal and railways, which are basic industrial areas that are essential to the people’s economy, have been pursuing daily and monthly people’s economy plans that have helped produce a breakthrough at the forefront of the drive to build a powerful economy.” The PBS added, “Thermoelectric and hydroelectric power plants across the country have greatly increased their power production, accelerating the grand march toward a powerful economy.”
o On March 22, the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Ryu Ki-ryol, director of the Central Meteorological Institute under the Hydro-Meteorological Service, as saying, “The DPRK has a new system that allows it to receive satellite data with the support provided by the World Meteorological Organization last year.”
【Outside North Korea】
o On March 18, the North Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS) reported, “Today, Kim Yong-nam, DPRK President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, departed from Pyongyang on a special plane to visit Namibia, Angola and Uganda.”
o On March 19, the KCBS quoted a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry as saying, “The recent serious, violent crimes that took place in the city of Lhasa in a Tibetan autonomous region of China, including battery and arson, had been systematically planned and organized by the Dalai Lama group hand in hand with separatists seeking Tibetan independence at home and abroad.”
o On March 19, the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, “To mark the 20th anniversary of Comrade Kim Il-seong’s visit to Mongolia and the 60th anniversary of the forging of diplomatic ties between the DPRK and Mongolia, the Pyongyang Circus is successfully performing in Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia.”
o On March 20, the KCBS said, “A delegation of the Russian Railways Company visited Pyongyang from March 11 to 15.” The KCBS detailed the visit by reporting, “During the visit, the delegation met its DPRK counterpart and agreed to negotiate legal and technical issues regarding the construction of a container terminal at Rajin Port, the reopening of a railway connecting Rajin and Khasan, and thereby jointly arranging for international freight transit via the trans-Siberian railway, as well as establishing a joint venture to pursue the project.”
【Inter-Korean Issues】
o On March 17, concerning the argument put forth by the director of the Research Institute on National Security Affairs (RINSA) at the South Korea National Defense University that the South Korean-US alliance should be strengthened to put pressure on North Korea, the North’s Rodong Sinmun blasted, “Pro-US, conservative forces in South Korea are joining hands with foreign forces in an attempt to propel the entire nation toward the dire disaster of nuclear war.”
o On March 17, Rodong Sinmun published an editorial titled “National Cooperation Is a Justifiable Approach to Fight for the Korean Nation” in which it warned, “South Korea’s joining hands with foreign forces will bring about a crisis in North-South Korean relations.” The newspaper denounced, “South Korean warmongers’ cold shoulder toward national cooperation and seeking of cooperation with foreign forces are anti-national crimes that tear down the foundation for the development of North-South Korean relations and completely violates the June 15 Joint Declaration.”
o On March 18, the North’s Pyongyang Broadcasting Service (PBS) stated, “Peace is the long-standing desire of humanity,” and castigated the US by alleging, “The reason the deterrence of war and the safeguarding of peace are the nation’s leading challenges is that the US continues to persist on the Korean peninsula as a dangerous force that threatens to wage an intrusive war and in fact is running mad to spark such a war.”
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