Scores of former North Korean soldiers who defected to South Korea will this week form a group aimed at toppling the regime with the help of serving soldiers there, one of its leaders said yesterday. Some 200 ex-soldiers will launch the NK People’s Liberation Front on Thursday, said Jang Ce-yul, the group’s secretary-general.
“We still stay in touch with many of our former colleagues in the military, and many of them are fully aware they can’t survive long under Kim Jong-il’s regime,” said Jang, who defected two years ago. “We will provide aid to help them bring down the North’s regime at the hands of the North Korean people and military.”
He said the group would help smuggle publications, videos and other material into the tightly controlled country and circulate them among the North’s soldiers. Jang said Hwang Jang-yop, a former top official who defected to the South in 1997, would be an adviser.
The group plans several projects with current members of the North’s military and anti-regime groups to “weaken the military’s loyalty” to Kim, Jang said. He refused to give details, citing concerns about the security of former military colleagues still in the North. The group said on its Web site it would also release a recently recorded telephone conversation with a senior North Korean army officer on Thursday to demonstrate its links to the military there.
Its members at the inauguration ceremony on Thursday — the anniversary of the founding of North Korea — will also stage a performance simulating the assassination of Kim, the Web site said.
South Korea has numerous organizations representing refugees from the North or campaigning against the regime, but this will be the first to link former soldiers. About 19,000 North Koreans have fled the North for the South since the end of Korean War, the vast majority in recent years.
Meanwhile, the North staged a massive celebration rehearsal for its biggest political conference in 30 years, a news report said, amid predictions that Kim would use the meeting to give a key ruling party position to one of his sons.
Pyongyang has said it will hold a rare Workers’ Party conference early this month to elect new party leaders, sparking speculation that the event would be linked to Kim’s moves to groom his third and youngest son — Kim Jong-un — as his successor. No exact date for the meeting has been provided.
On Sunday, several thousand people carrying colorful plastic flowers gathered in Pyongyang’s main Kim Il-sung square to rehearse a celebration for the party meeting, Xinhua news agency reported from Pyongyang. Some children also rehearsed at a scenic spot at Pyongyang’s Taedong River, the report said.
One Xinhua photo showed a crowd of people packing a Pyongyang street and waving red and pink plastic flowers, while another photo showed people putting up umbrellas and heading home afterward.
The Workers’ Party meeting is its first major gathering since its landmark 1980 congress where Kim Jong-il was confirmed as North Korea’s next leader. He eventually took over power in 1994 when Kim Il-sung died of heart failure.
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday that the meeting will start today or tomorrow, citing an unidentified source privy to North Korea affairs.
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