Still trying to make some sense of what went on today with the North Korean’s announcing their intention to test a nuclear device. Frankly, this is a pain in the ass, and I’m getting sick and fuckin’ tired of trying to make sense of North Korean intentions and separate truth from falsehood. Did they say they are going to test, or didn’t they? Did they say they have nukes, or didn’t they? I’m getting to the point that I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what the North Koreans did or didn’t say - it changes every minute (as do the reports of what they did or didn’t say), and not that I put much stock in North Korean pronouncements before, but at this point, I’ll assume that every word that comes from a North Korean’s mouth is pure and utter bullshit.
Excuse the rant.
Anyway, just quickly going through the South Korean press reactions, and I’m feeling no more enlightened. In fact, my head hurts - badly.
It should be pointed out that some new sources (Korean Economic Daily, OhMyNews, Hankyoreh) are saying that its possible that the American news media cut off the beginning of North Korean delegation head Kim Young-il’s statement, which, according to them, might have read, “If the United States does not drop its hostile attitude towards us, we will declare ourselves a nuclear power.” The Korean Economic Daily report straight out called the American press accounts erroneous (or more precisely, “close to erroneous”), and that such talk was simply the North rhetorical style, one they’ve used many times in the past to up the pressure on its negotiating partners. The Hankyoreh went even further - accusing American “hawks” of slicing off both the beginning and the end of Kim’s statement - a statement which supposedly went like this (warning - I’m translating here)
“During these talks, if you reject our reasonable proposals, and keep stubbornly demanding that we stop our nuclear program first, we cannot help but judge that you will not give up your scheme to stifle us militarily. In this situation, we, too, will not be able to give up our nuclear deterrent, and have no choice but strengthen it.”
Note: CNN translates it as:
“If the United States continues to demand we drop the nuclear program first and ignores our appropriate proposals, we have no choice but to beef up our nuclear deterrent power.”
Now, the problem is this - both the Hankyoreh and CNN appear to be referring to Kim’s address speech, which was released on KCNA (don’t bother checking their site - it’s not there). Now, I have yet to find the statement in whole, although Yonhap News has a summary of the statement (in Korean) that follows rather closely the English version printed at CNN. But the CNN translation (which apparently was the English language statement given out by the KCNA) leaves off the final two paragraphs found in the Korean version (in which can be found the statement above), although CNN includes the statement in another report (sans the rest of the speech, however) Moreover, the Hankyoreh and Yonhap News run two slightly different versions of the statement that appear to also differ slightly in meaning (the Yonhap version seems to suggest that the Norks have yet to judge American intentions, while the Hankyoreh version seems to suggest that they already have). On this note, however, a warning - I am not, by profession, a linguist, and North Korean semantics are notoriously difficult to figure out, even for much more qualified individuals than myself. I’m doing the best I can here to make the most of an extremely perplexing problem and an overload of information, but be aware of my limitations.
More confusion - while the Hankyoreh makes reference to the keynote speech, it may not be that particular speech alluded to by the unnamed source in the WaPo and CNN. The threats, if they did happen, may have occurred at another time. In this report from Yonhap News, it is written:
During the general meeting this morning, once Russia and Japan pointed out favorably some of the American proposals, the North Korean delegation flew into a fit of rage while Kim Young-il made the troubling announcement, expressing the position that “Because it’s clear that the United States has no intention to drop it’s hostile policies towards North Korea, we are prepared to declare our possession of nuclear weapons, including a nuclear test.”
Chief American delegate James Kelly reportedly left the room in anger after hearing that one, but don’t ask me where Yonhap got its information from - I have no clue. For that matter, Yonhap is also reporting that chief Russian negotiator Alexander Losyukov is denying that the Norks made any such threat, believing that the American source in question simply misunderstood. Concerning the nuclear tests, he claims that the North Koreans had threatened to “show us something,” but they did not make the threat reported above during these talks.
Fucked if I should know who said what at this point.
