North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju watch a performance by the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces in Pyongyang in this photo released yesterday by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency.
AFP/Pyongyang
North Korea has replaced its hawkish armed forces minister after just six months in the job - the latest in a long line of top military reshuffles by supreme leader Kim Jong-Un.
The new minister was identified by the Korean Central News Agency as Jang Jong-Nam, a relatively young and little-known field commander believed to be in his mid-50s.
He replaces Kim Kyok-Sik, whose appointment in November last year was seen as a hardline choice given that he was widely believed to have directed - as commander of the 4th Army Corps - the 2010 shelling of a South Korean border island.
The People’s Armed Forces Ministry is essentially the defence ministry and comes under the control of the powerful National Defence Commission.
Kim Kyok-Sik’s replacement comes as the peninsula emerges from a period of highly-elevated military tensions that followed the North’s nuclear test in February.
South Korea noted the personnel change and said yesterday it was closely monitoring all internal shifts in the North’s military.
“We do not know if (Jang) is a less hawkish figure, but it appears that he is from a younger generation,” said defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok.
“Just because there is a new dot that does not mean that a whole line or landscape changes. We need more time to figure out the overall direction,” Kim added.
Prior to his appointment, Jang was reported to be the commander of the Korean People’s Army’s 1st Corps in Kangwon Province on the east coast. A recent photo in the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed him as a three-star general.
Separately, South Korea and a US strike force led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz yesterday kicked off a joint naval drill slammed by North Korea as a “wanton” provocation and rehearsal for war.
The two-day exercise began with the departure of the 97,000-tonne Nimitz, one of the world’s largest warships, from the southern South Korean port of Busan where it had been docked over the weekend, the US navy said in a statement.
“The operations include integrated flight operations, air defence events, surface warfare training events, precision ship manoeuvres, and liaison officer exchanges,” it said.
A number of other naval ships including guided-missile cruisers and a guided-missile destroyer will also take part in the drill designed to “reinforce regional security and stability”, it added.
The North called the latest exercise with the Nimitz “a grave military provocation” that would trigger a fresh cycle of escalating tensions.
“This is a wanton threat against us... that will push the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war,” Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling party, said in an editorial yesterday.
“How could we ever ignore the arrival of such dangerous forces to the South?” it said.
“The warmongers... should never forget that our forces stand fully ready to attack at once in line with operational plans approved by our top command,” the newspaper added.