Jun Ji-hye, a reporter at the finance desk of The Korea Times, focuses primarily on economic policy and government agencies, mainly covering the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Ministry of Budget and Planning, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service. She previously covered financial authorities, including the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, and earlier worked on the political, city and business desks, reporting on a wide range of issues.
NK warns defense ministry spokesman
By Jun Ji-hye
North Korea warned the Ministry of National Defense, Tuesday, that its spokesman Kim Min-seok will pay a heavy price for his “thoughtless and flagrant” slander of Pyongyang.
“Defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok will have to be ready to pay the price for his verbal abuse,” said Uriminjokkiri (Among Korean people), North Korea's leading propaganda website. “We will not just sit by and watch.”
The remarks came a day after Kim claimed that the reclusive state must disappear soon.
Mentioning the North’s denials of flying spy drones across the border, Kim said that Pyongyang exists only to hold up a single person.
“It is an unreal country that regularly lies and uses historically retrogressive rhetoric. That is why it must vanish,” he said.
The website is run by the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. It said, “Kim’s remarks amount to an open challenge and provocation against the North, which resulted from the South’s habitual hostility and its ambition to confront Pyongyang.”
But the isolated state did not expand the scope of criticism to the entire South, limiting it to only Kim.
The spokesman toned down his remarks Tuesday, saying “I did not mean the entire North. I just talked about the behavior of the North Korean regime.”
He said he made the comments with the hope of improving living conditions of people in the secretive state.
“I feel regret thinking about almost 2,000 people there who suffer from hunger,” he said.
However, he continued to indirectly criticize the North, saying, “A fundamental responsibility of the government is helping the people perusing happiness in their life. Such things never happen in the North. Human rights do not exist there. The authorities even carry out executions on their own authority.”
Last week, the defense ministry, in conjunction with U.S. experts, concluded that the North sent three unmanned aerial vehicles that recently crashed in the South, citing their GPS coordinates.
Two drones were found in Paju, Gyeonggi Province and on the border island of Baengnyeong on March 24 and 31, respectively, while the third was discovered in Samcheok, Gangwon Province on April 6.