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Posters criticizing the Kim Jong-il regime have been posted in public places in three northern cities in North Korea and news has started leaking out by cellphone, showing signs of cracks in the reclusive state's Iron Curtain, reported the New York Times on Monday (local time).
In its Japanese dispatch entitled ¡°Japanese Officials Warn of Fissures in North Korea,¡± the NYT described a poster referring to the North's belief in self-reliance that read, ¡°The Juche philosophy has made people slaves. It has created an absolutist, hereditary kingdom, rather than one where the people are the main players. The Kims, father and son, have made our people miserably poor and this country is now a global dropout that is far from being able to afford the meat soup, tile-roofed houses and silk clothes that Kim Il-sung promised us in 1957.¡±
According to the paper, Shinzo Abe, the acting secretary-general of Japan¡¯s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said on Fuji TV on Sunday, ¡°I think we should consider the possibility that a regime change may occur, and we need to start (developing) simulations of what we should do in such an event.¡±
The paper cited an editor at the South Korean Monthly Chosun as saying, ¡°China may be forming a fallback plan should Kim Jong-il prove incapable of reform or holding on to power. The scenario the Chinese are looking into is to create a buffer regime through North Korean defectors.¡±
The paper said, ¡°There is still mystery surrounding the (removed) portraits, which disappeared this fall from some hotels, meeting halls and government buildings,¡± adding that, ¡°Mr. Kim might want to adopt a lower profile to avoid blame at home for North Korea¡¯s economic failures and to avoid 'coming into the cross-hairs of U.S. hawks'¡±.
(Kim Jae-ho, jaeho@chosun.com )
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