|
(2nd LD) N. Korea conducts sweeping military promotion ahead of founder's birthday
By Sam Kim
SEOUL, April 14 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Wednesday carried out the second biggest promotion of generals since he took power, official media reported, as the country geared up to mark the birthday of his late father and North Korea's founder.
Kim issued an order promoting a group of 100 general-grade officers "on the occasion of the Day of the Sun," the birthday of his father, Kim Il-sung, which falls on Thursday, the Korean Central News Agency said in a report monitored in Seoul.
The promotion was the biggest in scale since 1997 when Kim Jong-il raised the ranks of 129 generals in an apparent bid to consolidate his grip on the military after he took over the regime from his father, who died four years earlier.
A massive personality cult surrounds the father and son in the secretive communist state. Their birthdays are commemorated as holidays with exhibitions, performances, competitions and public gatherings to pledge loyalty.
"The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK which President Kim Il-sung founded and led along the road of one victory after another have grown to be a matchless revolutionary army," Kim Jong-il was quoted as saying as he promoted the generals. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
Gen. U Tong-chuk, a senior official at the North's spy agency and a member of the National Defense Commission, the highest seat of power, stood out as he had already been promoted in April last year.
In an earlier report, the KCNA said Kim visited the Large Combined Unit 567 of the Korean People's Army and praised the capabilities of his military to repel enemies.
The servicemembers have "grown not only to be a death-defying corps of human bombs and vanguard fighters of Songun (military-first) revolution ... but to be powerful revolutionary armed forces equipped with modern weapons," Kim was quoted as saying.
North Korea has been developing nuclear arms in what it claims to be an effort to deter U.S. intention to topple its leadership. Under U.N. sanctions for its two nuclear tests, Pyongyang has recently signaled willingness to rejoin stalled six-nation talks aimed at its denuclearization, but demands the U.S. launch separate negotiations toward a peace treaty to formally close the 1950-53 Korean War.
"To conclude a peace treaty is the only reasonable and realistic way for the successful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the Rodong Sinmun, the paper of the ruling Workers' Party, said in a commentary carried by the KCNA.
The KCNA did not say where and when the 68-year-old North Korean leader watched the live-fire drill, which North Korean radio in a separate report said "instantly shattered enemy lines and turned them into a sea of fire."
North Korea has in recent years launched a series of military and economic campaigns to become a "kangsong taeguk" -- a great, prosperous and powerful nation -- by 2012, the centennial of Kim Il-sung's birthday.
Outside observers widely believe North Korea is engineering yet another hereditary power transfer to Kim Jong-il's third son, Jong-un, believed to be as young as 27.
Talk of a succession rose after Kim Jong-il was rumored to have suffered a stroke in the summer of 2008, disappearing from public events for months.
Clear signs of a successor had yet to be found in reports released from Pyongyang on Wednesday, while residents decorated the city with flags, placards and "Kimilsungia" flowers to celebrate the birthday of their late leader.
Foreign embassies in the capital presented Kim Jong-il with congratulatory letters, the KCNA said, while people visited the sites where the ruling family had once resided.
"Pyongyang has turned out in a festive mood," the KCNA said. "The streets of the city are bedecked with national flags, red flags, placards" praising Kim Il-sung.
The festivities in North Korea contrasted with bewilderment in South Korea where a naval ship mysteriously exploded and went down last month near the tense western inter-Korean sea border.
Seoul expects to pull the ship out of the water as early as Thursday, a process that will quicken efforts to determine the cause of the sinking. Seoul's defense officials say they have not ruled out North Korea's involvement, but are also looking into possibilities of an internal explosion or a collision with a reef.
samkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
|
Home
