Pyongyang steps up its war of words

Pyongyang’s uneasiness with the current Lee government finally raised its ugly head. In the today’s Commentator’s article in Rodong Sinmun, the party’s official mouthpiece, titled “The only thing the South can get by confronting the North is self-destruction,” the regime directly criticized the president Lee for turning sour inter-Korean relations again after a decade of rather thawing-out relations under two engaging governments.

In the article which is believed by many NK experts to be often used by the regime when it wants to express deep frustration or angry over external situations, it put blames the recent developments including casting South Korean officials out of Kaesung, the joint industrial zone, last month, solely on Lee Myung-bak, who took office vowing to have a tough line against its recalcitrant Northern neighbor.

“Lee Myung-bak and his clique try to overturn every accomplishment since the June 15 declaration citing nonsense like ‘regaining the lost decade,’ ‘putting priority on the Korea-US relations,’ ‘and pragmatism,’" goes the article, not failing to mention the name, Lee Myung-bak, as the prime target of its bold criticism.

Since the conservative president took power over a month ago, the North avoided an all-out verbal war with the South, even though it continued showing its usual hard-feelings against the fact that a conservative candidate won the election which indicated Seoul’s future NK policy would be a lot different from the ones of the last decade.

Seoul remained unmoved by NK’s outburst of anger against the president but scurried to call its senior officials together on an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to it. Lee Dong-kwan, Blue House spokesman, said “we will respond (to it) according to our practical position of thorough principles and flexibility.”

Given that Pyongyang’s decades-long tendency to try to tip the difficult situation to its side by waging a war of words, this can be understood as such, but the fact that Lee was elected on promises to act sternly against Pyongyang’s misbehaviors points that the two Koreas would not find it easy to see eye-to-eye on every issue ranging from inter-Korea businesses to more tricky human rights issue in NK.