UPDATE 1-North Korea's Kim lauds military in "push to victory"

April 14, 2012|Reuters

* Kim Jong-un speaks in public for first time, lauds


* Third nuclear test seen as North Korea flexes muscles

* Kim has no option but to follow policies of father

* No alternative source of power in North Korea to Kim


By Maxim Duncan

PYONGYANG, April 15 (Reuters) - North Korea's new leader

delivered his first major public speech on Sunday as the

impoverished state celebrated the centenary of its founder's

birth, and called for a push to "final victory" at a mass

military parade in the country's capital.

A jowly Kim Jong-un, clad in black and the third Kim to rule

North Korea, read monotonously from a script in Pyongyang's

central square after goose-stepping soldiers and sailors

showcased the North's military power in spring sunlight.

In a move that indicated Kim would stick to the


of nuclear weapons capacity, he lauded his grandfather, Kim


builder of our revolutionary armed forces".

"Let us move forward to final victory," the 20-something

leader urged tens of thousands of military and civilians as they

applauded throughout his more than 20-minute speech.

While its contents were uncontroversial, the speech itself

was a big surprise after many years of silence from Kim's father

when he presided over similar events.

Sunday's celebration followed North Korea's attempt to

launch a long range rocket, which ended in embarrassing failure

on Friday.

The youngest Kim to rule the isolated country appears to

have little choice but to stick to his father's playbook of

milking the country to develop weapons and blackmail the

international community for aid and recognition.

The state that Kim inherited in December after the death of


wants to possess a nuclear weapon and to develop the ability to

hit the United States with it - the aim, critics say, of the

failed rocket launch.

Behind those ambitions are 23 million people, many

malnourished, in an economy whose output is worth just $40

billion annually in purchasing power parity terms, according to

the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, compared with South

Korea's $1.5 trillion economy.

The puny size of the economy means development is not the

answer, tying Kim into the policies of his late father who

oversaw the development of the state's nuclear and missile


"For Kim Jong-un, opening North Korea means the end of a

system that his grandfather and father fostered," said Virginie

Grzelczyk, a North Korea expert at Nottingham Trent University

in Britain.

"Kim Jong-un is unlikely to be losing power over the launch,

as the elite and the military need his legitimising and mythical

presence in order to pacify the North Korean population."

The small scale of the economy is matched by North Korea's

limited diplomatic clout. It has few friends other than China,

whose strategic interest is in keeping a buffer between it and

South Korea which has U.S. military bases.

Even China sounded increasingly exasperated in the run-up to

Friday's rocket launch as Pyongyang ignored its pleas for

restraint, despite aid pumped in by Beijing, and its diplomatic

protection at bodies like the United Nations.

Without real weight in the international arena, Pyongyang is

forced to rely on periodic rocket launches, nuclear tests and

attacks on South Korea, such as the one in 2010 when it shelled

an island, to remind the world of its existence, analysts say.

That is likely to mean sticking to the same script as in

2009, when North Korea followed a failed attempt to put a

satellite into orbit with a nuclear test.

Intelligence satellite images showing a tunnel being dug at

the site of two previous tests imply that it either wishes to

remind the world of the possibility, so as to prompt a return to

aid for disarmament talks, or is actually preparing for one.

"Internationally, now they have to do a nuclear test,

preferably using uranium, just in order to show that they should

be taken seriously," said Andre Lankov, a North Korea expert at

South Korea's Kookmin University.


Pyongyang did depart from its previous practise when it

publicly admitted on state television that the Unha-3 rocket had

failed to deliver its weather satellite into orbit in time for

Kim Il-sung's birthday.

A 2009 launch that the international community said had


news available to its people is from the state.

But to read into the announcement signs of new openness is

to overstate the issue, most commentators on North Korea say.

The presence of so many foreign journalists and the spread of

cellphones, of which there are now more than a million, made it

too risky.

"For all its habitual lying, the propaganda apparatus shies

away from lies it can too easily be caught out on," said Brian

Myers, a North Korea expert at Dongseo University in South