Reading the silence of North Korea
Richard Halloran wonders why Kim's focus is on US basketball star, not South Korea's new president
Something curious is going on in North Korea. The Pyongyang propaganda machine that regularly spews overblown rhetoric in the direction of South Korea, Japan and the US has been strangely silent about the inauguration of President Park Geun-hye in Seoul.
Indeed, North Korean leaders have not mentioned her name in public since mid-December, just before she was elected.
In particular, the regime of Kim Jong-un has ignored the call in her inaugural address last week for North Korea "to abandon its nuclear ambitions without delay". If it didn't do so, she asserted, "the biggest victim will be none other than North Korea itself".
Instead of the withering rejection that might have been expected, there has been total silence.
The government-controlled North Korean media has paid more attention to a visit by the American professional basketball star Dennis Rodman, who was known for his antics on the court. He and Kim watched a game together.
Why this uncharacteristic quiet from a regime that once contended that South Korea, Japan and America would "perish in a sea of flame"? As with much related to the secretive Hermit Kingdom, outsiders can only speculate on the motives:
