North Korea has sent a letter to the office of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea this week, threatening “retaliatory strikes without warning” if it did not stop conservative activists’ anti-Pyongyang rallies in Seoul, officials here said on Friday.
North Korea had often used such heated oratory against Seoul and Washington before. But its latest threat came amid concerns that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, might stage an armed provocation to raise tensions with the outside world in order to consolidate domestic unity following the execution of Jang Song-thaek, his uncle and presumed mentor, who had been considered the No. 2 man in the North, New York Times informs.
For analysts and policy makers in the region, Mr. Jang’s execution on Dec. 12 raised disturbing questions: Was it a sign of instability within the secretive regime and if so, will its hard-line military conduct provocative actions to raise its profile amid the internal political turmoil?
In its letter delivered through the border village of Panmunjom on Thursday, the National Defense Commission, a top North Korean governing agency headed by Mr. Kim, condemned recent rallies in downtown Seoul in which anti-North Korean and Confucian activists burned Mr. Kim in effigy, berating him as a “devil” who killed his own uncle. North Korea called the rallies “mega provocations” against Mr. Kim’s authority.
