North Korea leader surprises world with televised speech

A televised address by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the nation was surprising enough. A televised address to the nation calling peaceful relations with South Korea was even more unexpected. On January 1 2013, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, who took over the reins of power from his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011, went on state television and gave a speech calling for more harmonious relations with South Korea and declaring his intentions to rejuvenate North Korea’s feeble economy.

“An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontations between the north and the south,” Kim said. “All economic undertakings for this year should be geared to affecting a radical increase in production, and stabilizing and improving the people’s living standards.”

Kim Jong Un has so far developed a reputation of being more public than his father and may be adopting the habit of his grandfather, who routinely made public addresses on New Year’s Day. However, some analysts point out that while his public statement is a deviation from the status quo under Kim Jong Il, the content of his speech is not. Kim stressed the importance of maintaining North Korea’s military power in his speech. “The military might of a country represents its national strength. Only when it builds up its military might in every way can it develop into a thriving country.”

“In many respects, this speech could have been any of the last dozen,” said Marcus Noland, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, adding that Kim was drawing from “the same playbook of the last 50 years.”