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A billboard showing a fist crushing an American soldier reads "We will settle the score with those who hurt our pride wherever they are" in central Pyongyang, North Korea. /AP
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North Korean official media on Tuesday denounced President Lee Myung-bak as a "traitor" in a new twist to increasing attempts to ratchet up tensions between the two sides. The Workers Party¡¯s Rodong Shinmun newspaper also rejected Lee's plan to help North Korea raise annual per-capita gross national income to US$3,000 if the communist country scraps its nuclear programs and opens up to the outside world as an "anti-unification declaration."
It was the first time in eight years the North Korean media denounced a South Korean president by name. A Cheong Wa Dae official said this was ¡°inappropriate.¡± But another presidential official said South Korea will not specifically respond until after the April 9 general election and the Seoul-Washington summit.
In a commentary entitled "The South Korean Authorities Will Reap Only Destruction from Confrontation¡± with North Korea, the daily mentioned Lee's name as many as 49 times, calling him an "impostor", a "fraud" and a "traitor." "The Lee regime will be held fully accountable for the irrevocable catastrophic consequences to be entailed by the freezing of inter-Korean relations and the disturbance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."
It slammed Lee's ¡°denuclearization-opening-3,000¡± plan as ¡°reactionary pragmatism.¡± ¡°Even a boiled cow¡¯s head would burst into loud laughter,¡± it said.
It was apparently a part of an ongoing campaign to increase pressure on Seoul and Washington following the expulsion of South Korean officials from the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex and its firing of missiles into the West Sea last week.
Pundits earlier predicted tensions will be prolonged as the North has taken umbrage at the change in Seoul¡¯s North Korea policy toward a more ¡°reciprocal¡± arrangement where hitherto unconditional economic aid is to be met with some kind of concession. On Tuesday, the Rodong Shinmun duly warned Lee¡¯s presidency was a ¡°thorny¡± factor in inter-Korean relations.
"We'll see how South Korea will get along with its back turned against us,¡± the daily blustered. ¡°We can get along on our own without South Korea."
It said denuclearization was not an inter-Korean issue, ¡°but a matter between (North) Korea and the U.S.¡± The Lee administration ¡°should not forget the lessons of previous (South Korean) governments that experienced humiliating frustration after calling for priority to be given to the nuclear issue."
Ryu Dong-ryeol, a researcher at the Police Science Institute, said the newspaper was essentially warning that, like during the first nuclear crisis, ¡°North Korea may seek to ostracize South Korea while attempting to improve ties with the U.S."
The daily called the South Korean government's criticism of the North¡¯s human rights record a "political provocation."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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