DTN News - NORTH KOREAN DEFENSE NEWS: Kim Jong-un - North Korea Puts DMZ Troops On Alert
*North Korea's Kim Visits DMZ, Orders High Alert - AP
*North Korea's Kim Orders High Alert During DMZ Visit ~ The China Post Taiwan
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AP , The Independent UK, TWN, AFP , DTN News & Reuters(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 4, 2012: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered troops along the heavily armed border with rival South Korea to be on high alert during a visit to the Demilitarized Zone, state media reported Sunday.
Kim's visit to Panmunjom village, his first reported trip there since the December death of his father, Kim Jong Il, comes amid escalating militaristic rhetoric aimed at U.S. ally South Korea just days after Washington and Pyongyang agreed to a nuclear deal after years of deadlock.
Recent North Korean threats, including vows of a “sacred war” against Seoul over U.S.-South Korean military drills, appear to be aimed at a domestic audience, analysts say, and could be an effort to bolster Kim Jong Un's credentials as a military leader after showing off his diplomatic skills on the U.S. nuclear deal.
Still, the rhetoric keeps the region on edge and complicates diplomatic efforts to settle the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Washington has said that better inter-Korean ties are crucial for diplomacy to succeed. North Korea has also acted on its threats in the past. Fifty South Koreans died in violence blamed on North Korea in 2010, leading to fears of a broader conflict.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of North Koreans rallied in Pyongyang, vowing to topple South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who ended a no-strings-attached aid policy to the North when he took power in 2008, instead linking assistance to nuclear disarmament.
In rhetoric typical of the North, military chief Ri Yong Ho warned in a speech at Pyongyang's main Kim Il Sung Square that the North Korean army would “sweep out” the South Korean traitors using their guns, according to footage from North Korea's state TV.
A crowd of soldiers and citizens later paraded through the plaza, pumping their fists and chanting, “Let's kill Lee Myung-bak by tearing him to pieces.”
The North's foreign ministry said on Sunday the North's people were “full of hatred resentment” at the South's leader amid Seoul's ongoing joint military exercises with the U.S., which it says are war games for an invasion.
The state-run KCNA said more than 1.7 million young North Korean men have volunteered to join the army since Friday in a bid for “all-people revenge on South Korean human scum.”
A spokesman of the South's unification ministry that handles cross-border affairs said Seoul had no official comment on the rally, adding that responding to criticism from Pyongyang does little to improve ties.
The threats are aimed internally as Kim Jong Un bolsters his power among the elite and military as the third generation of his family to lead the country, said Jeung Young-tae, an analyst with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“It's something that Kim Jong Un must do as the successor,” Jeung said Sunday. “The North did a similar thing when Kim Jong Il appeared as the new leader” in 1994 following the death of his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, he said.
Pyongyang is also angry about a South Korean military unit near Seoul recently posting threatening slogans beneath portraits of Kim Jong Un and his father.
During his Panmunjom visit, Kim Jong Un told troops to “maintain the maximum alertness as they are standing in confrontation with the enemies at all times,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
State TV aired photos of Kim, dressed in a dark overcoat, shaking hands with a helmeted soldier and giving rifles and machine guns as souvenirs to troops.
Panmunjom is a cluster of huts inside the 154-mile (248-kilometer) -long DMZ, which is jointly overseen by the U.S.-led U.N. Command and North Korea in an arrangement established in 1953 to supervise the cease-fire that ended the three-year Korean War. About 28,500 American troops are still stationed in South Korea.
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