North Korea marked the 63rd birthday of leader Kim Jong Il on Wednesday with feasts of pheasant and venison for the capital’s elite — and a healthy side order of propaganda — amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula over the communist state’s nuclear weapons programme.
”No matter how wild the US imperialists may run, our country remains unfazed and the spirit of our army and people is sky-high,” the North’s main Rodong Shinmun daily wrote in a Wednesday editorial for Kim’s birthday, celebrated as a national holiday.
North Korea flouted the international community last week by announcing it had nuclear weapons and was staying away from international nuclear talks where China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have urged it to abandon its atomic weapons development.
In Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said he told US officials during a weeklong trip to Washington that his country has no plans to begin ”large-scale” economic cooperation with the North until the nuclear dispute is resolved.
Still, Ban said South Korea would continue to provide aid to the poverty-stricken state out of ”humanitarian concern” despite North Korea’s latest statement.
Also on Wednesday, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged the North to return to the six-party talks. North Korea has said it won’t attend until Washington abandons its alleged ”hostile” policy.
”If North Korea has anything to allege, it should make the allegations at the negotiating table,” Roh told a meeting of his top security ministers, his office said.
State-run TV on Wednesday displayed the usually quiet streets of the capital, Pyongyang, lined with banners noting the date of Kim’s birthday and slogans wishing ”good health and long life for the general,” as Kim is commonly referred to as commander of the armed forces. Hundreds of soldiers in uniform were also shown dancing in a Pyongyang square, with news commentators saying that they had vowed to defend the ”headquarters of the revolution” — a reference to Kim.
North Korean broadcasts also showed soldiers making pilgrimages to Mount Paektu on the country’s border with China, where the North maintains that Kim was born. Some historians dispute that, saying his birthplace was actually in Russia’s Far East near the city of Khabarovsk, where his father — North Korea’s founding ruler Kim Il Sung — was based as an underground fighter battling Korea’s Japanese occupiers.
In the run-up to Wednesday’s celebration, festivals have been held across the country featuring Kimjongilia — a red flower cultivated to blossom around Kim’s birthday.
The North’s state media also has been filled with claims of Kim’s birthday being celebrated across the world, from Bangladesh to France, Poland to Pakistan.
Kim’s regime tolerates no dissent, and has isolated itself from the world behind the last standing Cold War frontier that divides it from capitalist South Korea.
There were reports last year that some of Kim’s portraits had been removed from public buildings, suggesting possible cracks in his hold on power, but South Korean officials have insisted the North’s government is nowhere near collapse and warned that such talk could push Pyongyang to desperate moves.
”As long as we are led by Kim Jong Il, illustrious commander born of Mount Paektu, endowed with outstanding commandership art and matchless courage and pluck, any anti-DPRK plot of the US imperialists will prove futile and the sovereignty of our country will be firmly defended under any circumstances,” Rodong Shinmun
wrote, referring to the North by the abbreviate of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The country relies on outside aid to feed its people after suffering natural disasters and poor harvests in the 1990s, and its economy has also been devastated by the loss of its main patron, the Soviet Union. – Sapa-AP