New leader, no change, North Korea declares

Dec 30, 2011, 3:11 GMT

Seoul - North Korea told 'foolish politicians around the world' Friday that it would not change its policies as it transitions to a new leader after the death of 17-year ruler Kim Jong Il.

The message was issued by the National Defence Commission, the country's most powerful decision-making body, a day after the official mourning period for Kim ended and his inexperienced youngest son, Kim Jong Un, was declared 'supreme leader of the party, state and army.'

Continuity in North Korea's policies would mean a 'military-first' approach, which has emphasized the pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles and built a 1.2-million-strong army, one of the world's largest, in an impoverished communist country of 24 million people.

'We declare solemnly and confidently that the foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet group in South Korea, should not expect any change from us,' the statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency said.

It also stated that Pyongyang would not engage with the government now in office in Seoul as it threatened retribution for 'hideous crimes' committed by South Korea while the North was mourning.

Relations between the neighbours worsened when conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak took office in 2008. He took a harder line toward the North than his liberal predecessors, insisting, for instance, that Pyongyang show progress in denuclearization if it wanted to continue to receive aid from Seoul.

Tensions reached a high point last year with the sinking of a South Korean warship, which Seoul blamed on Pyongyang and Pyongyang denied, and North Korea's artillery bombardment of a South Korean border island. The two incidents killed 50 South Koreans.

This year, tentative steps towards reconciliation were made, leading to isolated contacts between the two governments.

Both nations remain technically at war after an armistice and not a peace treaty ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea would 'refuse forever to engage with traitor Lee Myung Bak and his group,' the commission's message said.

Lee's government weighed how to respond to Kim Jong Il's death, which state media said occurred December 17 of a heart attack. It chose to send its sympathies to the North Korean people, not the government, and did not dispatch an official mourning delegation. It allowed two private delegations headed by women with ties to the North to go instead.

'We will surely force the group of traitors to pay for its hideous crimes committed at the time of the great national misfortune,' the commission's message said.

Hundreds of thousands of weeping North Koreans lined the streets of Pyongyang as a funeral procession drove Kim Jong Il's body through the capital for three hours Wednesday. A memorial service Thursday not only hailed him as a revolutionary but proclaimed he had passed his ideological mantel to his son.

Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be in his late 20s, has little political experience, but images on state television and pronouncements in state media have portrayed him as the country's sole leader with the firm backing of the military, the ruling Korean Workers Party and the people.