South Korean Leader Warns of Possible ‘Provocations’ From North
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
North Koreans left flowers at
the base of statues of the late leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in
Pyongyang, Monday, the eve of the second anniversary of the death of Kim
Jong-il.
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: December 16, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — President Park Geun-hye ordered the South Korean
military and police on Monday to increase vigilance, especially along
the disputed western sea border with North Korea. She warned that the
North might attempt armed provocations after the recent purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek, who was believed to have been the North’s second most powerful official.
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“Given the recent series of incidents in North Korea, there is
uncertainty over the direction in which the political situation there
will develop,” Ms. Park’s office quoted her as saying during a meeting
with senior aides. “We cannot rule out contingencies like reckless
provocations from the North.”
Ms. Park’s warning about what she called “the gravity and
unpredictability of the current situation” came as officials and
analysts in the region were scrambling to determine what Mr. Jang’s
execution might mean for the stability, internal politics and foreign
policy of North Korea, an opaque, nuclear-armed nation with an
inexperienced leader, Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 30 years old.
Mr. Jang, who was Mr. Kim’s uncle and had been regarded as a mentor, was
executed on Thursday after being accused of plotting to overthrow the
government. His downfall was startling not only because of who he was,
but also because of the unusually public way in which he was purged.
Abandoning its traditional secrecy over internal politics, the North
prominently detailed Mr. Jang’s alleged corruption and political
ambitions in state news reports. It also showed no qualms about
demonstrating brutality: It released photos of Mr. Jang at a
court-martial bearing what appeared to be marks of torture, including a
bruised and swollen eyelid.
The court verdict condemned Mr. Jang as “human scum” and “worse than a
dog,” citing among many other offenses his purported failure to applaud
as enthusiastically as others did during a 2010 meeting at which Mr. Kim
was elected to a party post. The North’s state-run news media called
for “shredding the traitor to pieces and throwing him into boiling
water.”
A weekend editorial in a conservative South Korean daily, Chosun Ilbo,
compared Mr. Jang’s purge to “a beast being dragged into a
slaughterhouse.”
Some analysts saw the dramatic developments as Mr. Kim’s attempt to
intimidate potential opponents and declare himself the North’s
unchallenged leader on the eve of the second anniversary Tuesday of the
death of his father, the longtime dictator Kim Jong-il. Mr. Jang would
have been one of Mr. Kim’s last potential rivals for power, they said.
North Korea justified Mr. Jang’s execution by accusing him of a number
of crimes that analysts said were growing problems in the North: drug
abuse, corruption and factional infighting. The accusation of plotting a
military coup suggested, probably unintentionally, that there were
cracks in the country’s monolithic elite and Mr. Kim’s grip on power.
On Monday, the North Korean People’s Army, the backbone of Mr. Kim’s
rule, reaffirmed its loyalty to him at a huge rally in the capital,
Pyongyang, outside the mausoleum that holds the remains of his father
and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Vice Marshall Choe Ryong-hae read a
statement of allegiance at the rally and warned the army to remain
vigilant because “a war comes without an advertisement.”
South Korean officials said they were worried that Mr. Kim or his
hard-line generals, might attempt an armed provocation in order to raise
tensions with the outside world and strengthen internal unity.
While telling lawmakers in Seoul about Mr. Jang’s purge two weeks ago,
the National Intelligence Service of South Korea said that Pyongyang had
moved more attack helicopters and multitube rocket launchers near the
disputed western sea border, which remains the most volatile section of
the two Koreas’ heavily armed frontier. The waters around the contested
sea border have been the scene of a number of military skirmishes in
recent decades, including a North Korean artillery assault on a South
Korean island in 2010 and a South Korean counterattack.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: December 16, 2013
An earlier version of this article misidentified the person shown in photographs at a court-martial hearing with a bruised and swollen eyelid. He was Jang Song-thaek, not Kim Jong-un.
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