Koreas Plan to Hold Talks on Military, South Says

The New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — Just hours after a new leadership structure had taken shape in North Korea, with the youngest son of the nation’s leader being awarded major military and political posts, a South Korean official said that the two Koreas would hold military talks on Thursday at the border village of Panmunjom.

The two sides have not held such talks in two years.

The defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, declined to discuss the agenda of the working-level meeting. But it was widely expected that South Korea would raise the issue of the sinking of one of its warships in March.

The renewal of military talks with the South was proposed this month by the North Koreans, apparently to focus on preventing naval clashes along their disputed western sea border.

Political analysts in Seoul were reluctant to connect the sudden resumption of military negotiations to what appeared to be the emergence of the son, Kim Jong-un, as the eventual successor to his father, Kim Jong-il, as the supreme North Korean leader. The younger Mr. Kim, who is believed to be 27 or 28, was given the rank of four-star general in the People’s Army and was named a deputy chairman of the military commission of the Workers’ Party.

A senior military post for Kim Jong-un was a prerequisite for his ascendancy to power. His father’s “military first” doctrine has given the armed forces the leading role in the political life of the country, even ahead of the Workers’ Party. Any future leader of North Korea would need a substantial military paragraph on his or her résumé.

Kim Jong-un’s other significant new positions — he now has a seat on the party’s Central Committee and is one of two deputy chairmen of the party’s military commission — are seen as more purely political and policy-making posts. The military commission’s other newly named deputy chairman is Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho. A seasoned military officer, Marshal Ri, 68, has been chief of the army’s general staff. He also was given a seat on the party’s Politburo, making him a superior of the younger Mr. Kim, whom he is expected to tutor and guide.

“Ri should be seen as the right-hand man for the inexperienced Kim Jong-un in the military,” Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea expert at Sejong Institute near Seoul, told the Yonhap News Agency. He will “play a crucial role in the transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un,” Mr. Cheong said.

But other analysts said that the changes were not likely to be well received by North Koreans who see the dynastic succession as a contradiction of the state’s Communist ideology.