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To: RealMuLan who wrote (56111)	11/17/2004 11:11:15 PM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 74559

Pyeongyang regime is stable, says top aide on North Korea November 18, 2004 ? In testimony yesterday before the National Assembly, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, South Korea's top policymaker on North Korea, carefully dismissed international media reports that Pyeongyang's leadership might be undergoing an upheaval. A Russian wire service reported Tuesday that portraits of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, had been removed from public display. The reports said pictures of Kim Il Sung, Mr. Kim's father and the founder of the communist country, were still in evidence, but that likenesses of Kim Jong-il had been taken down. "We need to do more work to see if the reports are true," Mr. Chung told lawmakers at a hearing on foreign and unification policy. North Korean television broadcasts showed the two portraits hanging side by side, Mr. Chung said. "Kim Jong-il has been carrying out his job normally until very recently," he said. Video of Mr. Kim touring a North Korean military base was broadcast yesterday on North Korean state-run television. South Korean intelligence officials expressed skepticism that any missing portraits might be connected with changes in North Korea's regime. "If the portraits had been taken down everywhere in the North, we would have known about it beforehand," an intelligence official said. Other analysts pointed out that in the early 1990s, the portraits of Mr. Kim had been taken down at his own order in a show of respect for his father. Mr. Kim reportedly said his portraits should not be hung next to his fathers' while the top leader was still alive. Kim Il Sung died in 1994. During his Assembly testimony, Mr. Chung also said South Korea should change its views on the North. "Taking into account the changed inter-Korean environment after the summit [in June 2000], the ‘main enemy' concept must be changed," Mr. Chung said. "In the post Cold War era, no country labels a particular nation as a main enemy and develops its defense strategy against it." Main enemy is the term that South Korea has employed in referring to the North in its Defense white papers since 1994. A North Korean envoy's threat in 1993 to make Seoul "a sea of fire" prompted South Korea to label the North the main enemy. North Korea has strongly protested against the use of the term. Separately, the chairman of the Uri Party, Lee Bu-young, told foreign correspondents in Seoul that the Roh administration should be willing to hold a summit with North Korea to resolve the nuclear crisis, even if North Korean leader Kim does not visit the South in return for the 2000 visit to Pyeongyang by then-President Kim Dae-jung. by Lee Young-jong, Ser Myo-ja <myoja@joongang.co.kr> joongangdaily.joins.com