The KCNA (via Yonhap) ran a straight news story — sans editorializing — that Barack Obama won the US presidential election, and that he would take over from next year.
It also noted that John McCain lost by a lot.
Yonhap notes that it’s unusual for North Korea to report on a US election so soon (in this case, after two days). It took about 10 days for them to report on Bush’s 2000 election, and five to announce that he’d been re-elected in 2004.
Meanwhile, the pro-Pyongyang Choson Sinbo seemed to be pleased:
“The situation surrounding the Korean peninsula is about to enter a new phase,” the Choson Sinbo newspaper published in Japan said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. “A president who calls for ‘change’ has emerged in the United States.”
The positive comments contrasted with the North’s campaign against conservative President Lee Myung-bak of the South, who the North has called “despicable human scum” for his pledge to get tough with its neighbor.
“If the Obama administration takes the lesson of the previous government and comes to dialogue with a more forward-looking position, then the situation of ‘communicating with the U.S. and shutting out the South’ will only deepen,” the newspaper said.
OK, about that last part — it might be of interest that the North said that if Obama moves forward with dialogue with the North, the “tongmi bongnam (“communicating with the U.S. and shutting out the South”) structure the Lee Myung-bak administration had itself created” would deepen.
This would seem to leave open the possibility of intra-Korean dialogue… if the Obama administration leans on 2MB to alter its North Korea policies (or 2MB reads the writing on the wall and does so on his own accord).
Then again, fucked if I know what North Korea’s trying to say.
Marmot’s Note: I guess it could be possible North Korea is hoping to isolate 2MB by dealing only with the United States. I doubt that’s going to work out for them, though. As I’ve made pretty clear, I’m no fan of the US President-elect, but one has to give credit where credit is due — he’s a smart guy, cautious and playing with an extrordinary amount of international good will. How he’ll play with conservative governments in South Korea and Japan has yet to be seen, but US foreign relations don’t change that much from administration to administration. The North, too, has to figure it will never get a better chance than this, so if the Obama administration ties improved relations with Washington with intra-Korean dialogue, everything will probably turn out fine (caveat: then again, it was Clinton, not Bush, who came close to actually wacking the North). Unless, of course, you live in the North, in which case things will continue to suck as long as they’re willing to put up with it.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Would you expect that Obama, no matter what he wants to do with the DPRK, can do it or would do it without involving South Korea? Bilateral talks wouldn’t work, methinks.
So far I can’t make sense of what they’re saying. Adding bilateral talks will just give NK another opportunity to play off one negotiation against the other. Surely someone should know enough game theory to see the pattern here. Bilateral talks mean the interests of four parties in the six-party talks will be ignored.
The GNP is completely baffled by Obama right now. They deserve blame for not preparing earlier, but they’re justified in seeing no logic here.
It was Bush’s team that made multilateralism (the Six Party process) an afterthought over the past year. Unless Obama plans to abandon the current agreements and start from scratch, you will not see much of a shift in America’s NK policy until Agreed Framework 2.0 proves to be a flop. That will likely take several more years of NK playing the allies off of each other.
True, but Bush didn’t run on a platform of bilateral faith-healing. I’m speaking of intentions.
Regardless, I’m still baffled.
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