N. Korea calls for murder of S. Korean President, State Dep’t still doesn’t think it sponsors terrorism

“When he eventually came to power, there was no book which deserved more careful study from the rulers, political and military, of the Allied powers. All was there….” – Winston Churchill, on Mein Kampf

History, which is diplomacy in the past tense, is littered with examples of despots who made their intentions clear, but whom journalists and diplomats in free nations have blindly refused to take at their word. So it was that in the late 1930s, the journalist and future U.S. Senator Alan Cranston published an unauthorized and unsanitized edition of “Mein Kampf,” leaving in the anti-Semitism and war threats that Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry had excised for its foreign readers. Hitler sued Cranston in a Connecticut court for a copyright infringement. The court enjoined the publication of Cranston’s translation and denied the American people a warning from history in the future tense. In our time, when North Korea’s hatred and war threats are accessible to any citizen with an Internet connection, we have no such excuse for our own denial of Pyongyang’s intentions.

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On October 11, 2008, just over a year after Pyongyang was revealed to have built a nuclear reactor in a part of Syria that is now controlled by ISIS, President Bush struck it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The rescission was a reward for Kim Jong-il’s commitment to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible” dismantlement of its nuclear program. For which we are still waiting.

Since 2008, North Korea has sent hit teams to assassinate North Korean exiles and human rights activists. On several occasions, it was caught shipping arms to Iran for the use of its terrorist clients, including Hezbollah, and possibly the Quds Force and Hamas. Last month, Arab media published evidence that Pyongyang sold anti-aircraft missiles to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. In 2014, Pyongyang’s cyber army, which operates from the Chilbosan Hotel in downtown Shenyang, presumably with the full knowledge and assent of the Chinese government, threatened terrorist attacks against American movie theaters that blocked the release of a crappy movie called “The Interview,” and hacked into South Korean nuclear power plants.

Despite all of this, the Obama Administration’s official view — to this very day — is that North Korea is “not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.”

In recent years, Pyongyang has also used its state media as an instrument of terrorist threats, an endemic genre I sometimes call “journo-terrorism. In most cases, the threats have come from the Korean Central News Agency, an organ of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, whose assets have been blocked by the Treasury Department since March for its role in censoring freedom of information and freedom of the press. In 2012, KCNA threatened South Korean media which published criticism of its government with artillery attacks. It also published a series of banners with lurid calls for the murder of then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Since 2012, KCNA has also been a partner in journalism with the Associated Press, pursuant to a memorandum of agreement the AP refuses to release, despite multiple calls by other journalists to do so.

After a run of vehemently racist, sexist, and homophobic slurs that never quite ended, KCNA is back to making death threats against South Korea’s presidents. Today, its target is Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s first female president. KCNA is unlinkable and very nearly unreadable, but I did so you don’t have to. I’ve pasted excerpts of the key language below the fold, along with some tweets by The Wall Street Journal‘s Jonathan Cheng.

For good measure, I’ve also added some of its more sexist language (just in case Gloria Steinem is reading), war threats (in case the “peace treaty” crowd is reading), and reaffirmations that it will never give up its nukes (in case the 38north crowd is reading). Click “continue reading” below and judge for yourself.

As you read this language, remember that words like these can have real consequences. In 2006, years before Park’s election to the presidency, a deranged assailant angered over a criminal investigation slashed her throat and came within less than an inch of inflicting a fatal wound. Last year, a pro-North Korean activist slashed the throat of U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert with a razor, an act that a KCNA commentary subsequently applauded as “a just punishment.”

In that context, there’s little question what Pyongyang expects the more extreme elements of its substantial cadre of sympathizers in South Korea to do. The question now is whether the U.S. government will overlook Pyongyang’s threats and calls to murder the democratically elected head of an allied state that it is bound by treaty to defend from North Korean attacks.

9/2
Park and her underlings keen on escalating the confrontation with the compatriots in the north as traitors to the nation are despicable trouble makers that should be thrown overboard as early as possible.
The dictatorship based on rotten roots can never last long no matter how desperately the old witch of Chongwadae may work to prolong her remaining days.
The same can be said of the fate of the poisonous mushrooms cultivated by her. -0-

9/2

KCNA: “Park, a living corpse, had better stop wagging her tongue and leave this world.”

– Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) September 2, 2016

9/1
We will have to make the Park group pay a dear price for its treacherous crime against human rights and focus on the time to settle accounts with them finally.
The projected enforcement of the “Law on Human Rights in North” will precipitate the ruin of traitor Park, the kingpin of human rights abuses, dregs of the puppet Ministry of Unification serving her and other dirty scum. -0-

8/30
Park had better bear in mind that her reckless call for escalating the confrontation and achieving “unification of social systems” would only precipitate her miserable ruin. -0-

KCNA: “The only way out for Park is to go to the hell.”

– Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) August 30, 2016

KCNA: S. Korean Pres. “Park Geun Hye, an evil witch…a top-class traitor and a lackey of the U.S.…is no more than a living dead.”

– Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) August 30, 2016

8/29

KCNA: “Such hysterics can be made only by a pet dog of the White House, a prostitute for Yankees.”

– Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) August 29, 2016

8/28 (on missile launch)
Park’s gibberish is an unpardonable insult to the army and people of the DPRK who consider the dignity of its supreme leadership as their life and soul and a high treason which deserves punishment of Heaven, the commentary notes, and goes on:
We will never overlook her invectives.
The powerful Paektusan revolutionary army is now waiting for the time when it will take revenge upon the female viper of Chongwadae keen on getting the sun eclipsed by her palm with the will to kill her without mercy.
Park will certainly come to clearly realize how dearly she will have to pay for her ceaseless vituperation.
Minju Joson Sunday says in a commentary: Gone are the days when the DPRK could warn Park of daring hurt the dignity of its supreme leadership. It is quite natural to force her to pay dearly for recklessly beating air. -0-

8/27
It would have been advisable for her to stay at Chongwadae at such a time. But she made such malignant remarks at the frontline unit, swishing her skirt. Her behavior was reminiscent of a tiger moth which threw itself into flames as it was a symptom of a dying psychopath whose thinking faculty and judgment have been paralyzed. [….]
She must be a psychopath hard to understand the adage that a short tongue can put a long neck at stake.
The warmonger is bound to perish in the flames kindled by herself. -0-

8/26
Intolerable is that traitor Park Geun Hye dared hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK, a hideous provocation, in the wake of her nonsensical talk about “economic difficulties in the north” and “its vacillation.”
This is treason that deserves punishment by Heaven as it is an intolerable insult to the service personnel and people of the DPRK.
The powerful revolutionary Paektusan army is waiting for the moment when the final order is issued to blow up Chongwadae, with the will to eliminate the mad woman of Chongwadae working hard to get the sun eclipsed by the palm.
It is the unanimous demand of all Koreans and the order of the nation’s history to cut off the windpipe of Park Geun Hye at an early date as she wags her tongue nonstop, not content with her desperate efforts to create conflicts and antagonism within the nation wherever she goes and to inflict misfortune and disaster of a nuclear war on the nation.
Traitor Park Geun Hye should bear in mind that she can never escape the miserable fate under all Koreans’ curse and denunciation though she goes frantic to get rid of destruction with impudent sophism and confrontation.
All Koreans aspiring after national reconciliation and unity should beat hard and bury Park, traitor for all ages, and preserve peace and security on the Korean peninsula and bring earlier the country’s reunification. -0-

8/26
Rodong Sinmun Accuses Park Geun Hye of Her Impudent Rigmaroles
The hearts of all service personnel and people of the DPRK are burning with hatred against Park Geun Hye, cruel and wicked confrontation maniac, and the resolution to take revenge upon her, and their arms are leveled at the old witch of Chongwadae as they do not show any mercy to the aggressors, provocateurs.
Park will have to keenly realize what disastrous consequences will be entailed by her reckless tongue-lashing. -0-

8/23
The stupid and ignorant Park group opted to take the road of war, confrontation and permanent division, not the way of peace, improved relations and reunification while persistently refusing to respond to the offer of good faith made by the compatriots in the north. Therefore, it is fated to meet only miserable destruction and death.
If the puppet group perpetrates a ridiculous provocation again, oblivious of the lesson taught by the August incident last year, the DPRK will never miss the golden opportunity but launch a great war for national reunification of justice and thus annihilate the group of traitors to the last man and blow up the bases of the U.S. imperialists, the chieftain of aggression, on the earth.

8/23
What she uttered is no more than disgusting rigmaroles of the wicked pro-U.S. and pro-Japanese lackey to embellish her criminal record of having turned south Korea into a veritable hell and driven the inter-Korean relations to catastrophe.
Her flurry of invectives only laid bare once again her true colors as a maniac keen on escalating the confrontation with the fellow countrymen in the north.
The DPRK’s nukes which can never be bartered for anything and are indestructible are symbolic of the independence and dignity of the nation and serve as a treasured sword for peace and reunification and assets for eternal happiness and prosperity. It is preposterous for the Park Geun Hye group to dare take issue with and slander the DPRK’s nukes though she is working with bloodshot eyes to massively introduce nuclear weapons from the U.S.
She will not be able to escape a stern punishment by history for her countless acts of treachery, cursed and denounced by the entire nation. -0-

8/20
It is a tragedy and disgrace to the nation that such wicked traitor zealously kowtowing to outsiders but getting desperate in doing harm to the compatriots is allowed to go scot-free. Only merciless punishment should be meted out to such old witch of Chongwadae.
Independent reunification can be hastened only when such pro-U.S., pro-Japanese lackeys as Park are thrown overboard as early as possible. -0-

8/16
This time, Park again termed her regime’s reckless moves for deploying THAAD in the face of strong criticism by the public at home and abroad a “step for the right to self-defense.” This is just a lame excuse and she should know that no one will be taken in by such sophism of a puppet that can do nothing without an approval of her U.S. master.
Park, who is chiefly to blame for reducing south Korea to a tundra of democracy, civil rights and people’s livelihood, malignantly pulled up the DPRK where all dreams and ideals of the people are coming true on the people-first principle. This is no more than nonsense talked by a psychopath.
Unpardonable is that Park openly revealed her wild dream for “unification through absorption”, not content with crying out for getting rid of “terror” for peace on the Korean peninsula and the future of the nation. She was so impudent as to ask others to join in “the effort for ushering in the era of unification” desired by her.
If she, a traitor barely prolonging her remaining days by kowtowing to the U.S., pursues the wild dream of “unification through absorption”, daring seek to topple down the DPRK, the DPRK will clearly show her what style reunification it will achieve to realize the desire of all Koreans for reunification before the end of her dirty life.
It is a tragedy and disgrace to the nation that such hideous confrontation maniacs as Park go with impunity only to bring misfortune and disaster to all Koreans.
If such traitors as Park go scot-free, misfortune and pain of the south Korean people will get worse and all compatriots will never evade the disaster of a nuclear war, and when the outside forces and pro-U.S., pro-Japanese traitors are eliminated at an early date, the day of the complete liberation of the country-the independent reunification will be hastened.
This is the conclusion drawn by the DPRK again.
Traitor Park should bear in mind that her desperate moves to escape ruin through awful tongue-lashing and reckless confrontation will only precipitate the miserable end of her fate, cursed and censured by all Koreans. -0-

8/11
The south Korean regime should know well that the DPRK’s nukes can never be an object of bargaining with the U.S. and others. It had better bear in mind that its peddling “threat from the north’s nukes” here and there would get it nowhere.
It is as clear as noonday that the whole of south Korea is bound to turn into a theatre of a nuclear war to be launched by the U.S. and the south Korean people will be put at greater peril as long as top-class pro-U.S. lackey Park Geun Hye stays in power.
All Koreans are called upon to resolutely bury Park Geun Hye group, disgrace to the nation and troublemaker of the international community, to defuse the ever-increasing danger of U.S. nuclear war against the DPRK and preserve peace on the peninsula and in the region. -0-