Koreas to Hold Military Talks, South Says

Koreas to Hold Military Talks, South Says
By MARK McDONALD
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/asia/30korea.html?th&emc=th


SEOUL, South Korea —Just hours after a new leadership structure had taken shape at a landmark party meeting in North Korea, with the youngest son of the nation’s leader being awarded major military and political posts, a South Korean official said the two Koreas would hold military talks on Thursday at the border village of Panmunjom.

The two sides have not held such talks in two years.

The defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to discuss the agenda of the working-level talks. But it was widely expected that South Korea would raise the issue of the sinking of one of its warship in March.

Political analysts in Seoul were reluctant to connect the sudden military talks to the emergence of the son, Kim Jong-un, as the apparent and eventual successor to his father, Kim Jong-il, as the supreme North Korean leader. The younger Mr. Kim, a political naïf who is believed to be 27 or 28, was given the rank of four-star general in the People’s Army and was named a deputy chairman of the military commission of the Workers’ Party.

A generalship for Kim Jong-un was a prerequisite for his ascendancy to power. His father’s doctrine of songun — the “military first” policy — has given the armed forces the leading role in the political life of the country, even ahead of the Workers’ Party. Any future leader of North Korea will need a substantial military paragraph on his or her resume.

Kim Jong-un’s other significant new positions — he now has a seat on the party’s Central Committee and is one of two deputy chairmen of the party’s military commission — are seen as more purely political, policy-making postings. (The National Defense Commission, a different body that is described in the national Constitution as “the highest guiding organ” in the country, is chaired by Kim Jong-il.)

The military commission’s other newly named deputy chairman is Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho. A seasoned military officer with substantial field experience, Marshal Ri, 68, has been chief of the army’s general staff. He also was given a seat on the party Politburo, making him a superior of the younger Mr. Kim, whom he is expected to tutor and guide.

“Ri should be seen as the right-hand man for the inexperienced Kim Jong-un in the military," Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea expert at Sejong Institute near Seoul, told the Yonhap News Agency. “The young vice marshal will play a crucial role in the transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un.”

Even if the political and military elites have signed off on the transfer of power to Kim Jong-un and other family members, analysts said, the changes were not likely to be well received by ordinary North Koreans who see the dynastic succession as a contradiction to the state’s Communist ideology.

“This kind of succession is very rare, and the ordinary North Korean people won’t like it,” said Yun Duk-kim, a North Korea expert and a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. But, he added: “It’s difficult for people show their displeasure, of course. It’s a totalitarian system. They just obey.”

Earlier this month North Korea proposed holding military talks with the South, apparently to focus on preventing naval clashes along their disputed western sea border.

The North also reportedly wanted to object to propaganda leaflets being dropped over the border by South Korean activists. In one leaflet attack last fall, with winter closing in, activists launched 10 massive helium balloons, with each balloon holding some 10,000 flyers. The notes talked about Kim Jong-il’s frailty, his lavish lifestyle in the face of widespread hunger, and called on people to rise up against the regime.

South Korea and the United States have blamed a North Korean torpedo attack for the sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. Seoul has demanded an apology from the North, which has denied any involvement.

A statement by the United Nations Security Council in July expressed “deep concern” over the Cheonan’s sinking but did not find North Korea culpable. The North Korean ambassador told reporters that the statement was “a great diplomatic victory.”

Lee Sung-yoon, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said Wednesday that North Korea “has closed the chapter on the Cheonan” since the United Nations statement: “They’re saying, ‘Let’s move on.’ ”

Analysts in Seoul said that North Korea was unlikely to apologize — at least not officially or publicly.

“Never,” said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “The North will not apologize, absolutely not.”

He added that feelings in South Korea remained raw over the sinking, which “makes it hard for my government to change its stance.”

The conservative administration of President Lee Myung-bak has consistently taken a hard line against large-scale aid to the North, and relations worsened after the Cheonan sinking. But the government recently allowed some moderate shipments of rice and flour to the North and also approved a Red Cross plan to send 5,000 tons of rice. Rice shipments two weeks ago — 203 tons that were donated by civic groups and opposition political parties — were the first such deliveries to the North in nearly three years.

“This government will remain consistent, although if North Korea apologizes and shows some willingness to denuclearize, maybe South Korea will show some flexibility,” said Mr. Yun, of the foreign affairs institute.

A North Korean apology is not out of the question, at least historically. Mr. Yun noted that Kim Il-sung, the current leader’s father, had apologized privately for a 1968 North Korean commando raid on the Blue House, the South Korean presidential residence. And Mr. Kim himself apologized to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan in 2002 for a number of what he called “unfortunate” abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and ’80s.

Meanwhile, in Beijing on Wednesday, South Korea and China held bilateral talks that were expected to center on security issues and the recent political changes in North Korea, the Yonhap News Agency reported.