Crying out loud for Korean war victims
North Korea marks war anniversary, minus US mention.
SEOUL: Pyongyang marked the anniversary of the start of the Korean War, but its habitual denunciations of the United States were conspicuously absent from state media in the wake of the recent Singapore summit.
The conflict began on June 25, 1950, when the North launched a massed invasion of the South, capturing Seoul three days later.
But Pyongyang has long accused the United States of provoking the Korean War as part of a plan for global domination and blames it for the division of the peninsula, agreed between Moscow and Washington in the closing days of World War II.
The North’s tightly controlled official media are normally packed with anti-American invective on June 25, but 2018 proved to be a marked exception.
“Every year on this day, our army and people row the boat of memories, full of creed and determination to defend the nation,” a report carried by the state-run Rodong Sinmun yesterday read.
“What surprised the world even more was ... our people’s solidarity to annihilate the enemy,” it added, without identifying the enemy by name in any of its coverage.
In stark contrast, all six pages of the newspaper last year were filled with colourful criticisms of the “US imperialists”, blaming Americans for “a holocaust in which they massacred countless Koreans in the most brutal and barbarous way”.
This year’s anniversary comes less than two weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump shook hands at a historic and unprecedented summit in Singapore.
More virulent forms of anti-US propaganda have been disappearing from the streets of Pyongyang, while images of missile launches and military formations on a prominent site outside the city train station have been replaced with vis- uals of industry and agriculture.
Analysts say the rare omission of the United States in North Korean media coverage of the anniversary may be part of the regime’s efforts to maintain the current diplomatic momentum.