THE RISING EAST
North Korea-U.S. communication harsh, but open
By Richard Halloran
The Korean Central News Agency, which says it speaks for the North Korean government, has been in a full-throated roar as the verbal conflict between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions has become increasingly tense.
In one recent day, the agency asserted that if the United States attacked North Korea, the North Koreans would "certainly make them pay for it in blood and turn the stronghold of the enemy into a sea of fire."
In another dispatch the same day, the agency said the United States would "not escape an ignominious defeat in the DPRK-U.S. confrontation." The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the country's official name.
There's more: "The United States is keen to bring a nuclear disaster to the Korean nation." North Korea's economic difficulties "are chiefly attributable to the U.S. aggressive and hostile policy of blockade.
"It is none other than the U.S., which wrecks peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and drives the situation to an extremely dangerous phase."
In a verbal chest-beating, the agency says that "no formidable enemy can be safe before the arms of the DPRK." Those who threaten the DPRK "will never survive its unpredictable strike." A warning: "The Yankees are well-advised to stop running amuck."
Associated Press
The agency's prose can be vivid as well as belligerent: "The U.S. attempt to stifle the DPRK, failing to see the might of their single-hearted unity, is a foolish act like kicking a rock with a bare foot."
Soldiers of South Korea, foreground, and North Korea, background, stand guard at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, 32 miles north of Seoul. The DMZ remains the most vivid symbol of the threat of war on the Korean peninsula.
Asked why the agency spews such inflammatory language, an experienced Pyongyang watcher says: "I'll give you a very Korean answer. North Korea is such a small country that they think, to have their voices heard, they have to shout. The more atrocious language you use, the better chance you have of being heard. China and Russia don't have to do that."
Besides, he says, "It's a matter of habit. They've been doing this for 50 years.
"Nobody has told them it's unsophisticated and they shouldn't do it."
The United States and North Korea don't have diplomatic relations, but that doesn't mean they don't communicate. North Korea lashes out or makes demands through the agency. The White House, State Department or Pentagon respond, using the voices of President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, through the press in Washington.
In this day of nearly instantaneous communication, North Korean and American words flash back and forth across the Pacific in a transoceanic pingpong match.
More communication goes through the North's delegation at the United Nations, and in capitals such as Beijing, Moscow and Kuala Lumpur, where each country has embassies.
In addition are channels such as informal talks between Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, last weekend. Richardson had dealt with North Koreans when he was in the Clinton administration.
Associated Press
But it is the North's news agency that carries the brunt of Pyongyang's statements and positions and is therefore closely scrutinized by U.S. intelligence agencies. Specialists in Washington closely analyze the language in an effort to discern what the North Koreans really mean.
James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state, shares his message with journalists in Beijing. In recent weeks, as the United States and North Korea snipe at each other, the Chinese capital has become a diplomatic center for the two countries, especially because the United States and North Korea have embassies there.
"It's extremely useful," one official says. "We try to match their words with their actions."
Some years ago, a U.S. analyst deduced that there had been a palace coup in Pyongyang just by systematically noting the order in which North Korean leaders appeared in official functions.
Indeed, more may be known through those assessments than in secretive Pyongyang itself. A former Polish diplomat, Radek Sikor-ski, who has visited Pyongyang, wrote recently: "Foreigners cannot buy regime newspapers — diplomats might glean too much from the vagaries of the changing party lines."
The agency's headquarters in Pyongyang is run by a committee of Communist Party bureaucrats headed by Kim Tong Sop, an upper-level functionary. Their dispatches are rendered into English by translators, many of whom have been trained in China by native English-speaking teachers.
The articles are transmitted to a branch office in Tokyo, where they are distributed to the Japanese and Western press and put onto the agency's Web site, www.kcna.co.jp.
The agency's operation there is run and financed by the Federation of Korean Residents in Japan, a pro-North Korean state within a state, having its own government, taxation, bank, schools and universities, and press.
Two e-mails to the address given on the Web site asking for information about the agency, however, went unanswered. Evidently, the agency communicates only on its own terms.
Richard Halloran formerly was a New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.
