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N.K. verbal attacks against Park get more serious

The level of North Korea’s slanderous remarks against South Korean President Park Geun-hye has far exceeded most people’s expectations. It is quite common for North Korea to publicly run defamatory comments against South Korean leaders. But the language has become extremely libelous and sexist, as she was described as an “ignorant bitch” and an “unchaste political prostitute.”

Breaking its promise to stop slandering one another in February, the authoritarian state’s verbal attacks were resumed after Park’s unification offer proposed in the eastern German town of Dresden on March 28.

During her European trip, President Park proposed a set of plans to lay the groundwork for unification, expand humanitarian aid and hold reunions of separate families.

In her speech, Park vowed to work with the United Nations to launch a humanitarian program to provide health care support for new mothers and their babies for their first 1,000 days. She also called for establishing joint offices for cooperation and building infrastructure in the North in exchange for rights to develop underground resources.

In an apparent rejection of her offer, the North’s official mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun called her a “freakish old maid” and “a frog in the well,” adding that she had “made fun of the North Korean people” with her plan to help its homeless children and people in extreme poverty.

Park said she felt her heart breaking when watching North Korean homeless children in foreign media broadcasts.

“Children who lost their parents in the midst of economic distress were left neglected out in the cold, struggling from hunger,” she said in her 20-minute speech delivered at the Dresden University of Technology.

A North Korean citizen criticizing Park’s humanitarian offer said in an interview with the KCNA news agency that she is a “repulsive wench who never had a chance to marry or bear a child.”

Then what’s behind the communist regime’s scathing verbal attacks on the South’s leader?

Kim Heung-kwang, head of the North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity group, says it is a tactical expression of North Korea’s dissatisfaction with Park’s unification proposal last month.

“Park’s proposals were not what North Korea wanted,” Kim said in a telephone interview with The Korea Herald.

“North Korea wanted the South to agree to plans to boost inter-governmental economic cooperation rather than humanitarian aid, so that they could rip off more (financial) resources from the Park administration,” he said.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)