North Korea Leadership Watch

Research and Analysis on the DPRK Leadership

Interactive NK Week

Update

1.) Kim Jong-il met with CCP International Director Wang Jiarui.

2.) The inter-Korean meeting ended without an agreement and a joint statement from North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security and State Security Departments:

“We have world-level ultra-modern striking force and means for protecting security which have neither yet been mentioned.”

Original

This week the DPRK will have three high level external interactions.  Two of them shall more or less center on inciting the North’s return to the Six Party Talks.  The third will be the umpteenth summit over the Kaesong Industrial Zone and tours at Mount Kumgang.

–Wang Jiarui, director of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Department, arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday.  On Sunday he attended a KWP International Department reception hosted by new director Kim Yong-il and deputy director Kim Song-nam.  Mr. Wang is expected to meet with Kim Jong-il, as he had done in 2009 and 2009.  Mr. Wang is expected to encourage the DPRK’s return to the Six Party Talks.  There may also be talk of KJI shipping up to Beijing.

–UN Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Lynn Pascoe, will arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday.  Mr. Pascoe, a former US Ambassador, will “talk about the entire range of issues while we are up there.”  This will mark the first trip to North Korea by a senior UN official since Ban Ki-moon became Secretary-General in 2007.

–On Monday (8 February), los dos Koreas will convene in Kaesong for another meeting over tours to Mount Kumgang and issues affecting the Kaesong Industrial Complex.  There was a bit of a commotion about the DPRK sending Kang Yang-chol, a Councilor of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee and lower ranking official to meet with a director of the ROK Ministry of Unification, Kim Nam-shik.

It seems that a round of public relations gestures and teeth-pulling is only appropriate during the week ahead of Kim Jong-il’s birthday.

An affiliate of 38 North