From the JoongAng Ilbo:

Washington and Pyongyang have clearly ended their rhetorical truce, one that began just before the interim agreement in September at nuclear disarmament talks in Beijing, and are limbering up their scathing denunciations again.

Really? Go to NK News: Database of North Korean Propaganda, type in ‘American’ in the search box with a date range of September 2005 until present. Scroll down into November. If what you find there doesn’t amount to “scathing denunciations” from North Korea, nothing does. And that is just from the KCNA.

U.S. President George W. Bush took the opportunity presented by a speech in Philadelphia, mainly on Iraq but also covering other terror-related topics, to say, “North Korea is a country that has declared boldly they’ve got nuclear weapons, they counterfeit our money and they’re starving their people to death.”

True that he said those things, and those things are true.

Officials [in South Korea], increasingly unhappy with the U.S. denunciations of their brethren in the North, tried to restrain their own. “Considering the circumstances, we would be better off if these things were not being said out loud,” a senior Seoul official said yesterday. (emphasis added)

Their “brethren”? What is the ROKA for? Who has repeatedly threatened to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire”? And that after over fives years of the Sunshine Policy. What is a major reason for the USFK?

The Roh administration’s basic policy line on the North is one of patience, forbearance and support, with the hope that it can effect some relaxation of cross-border military tensions on the one hand and lessen the danger of a collapse of the North Korean regime, which would be a huge financial burden for Seoul.

Read: the Roh administration’s policy is one of appeasing North Korea, even if that means spurning refugees and promulgating anti-American policies. Don’t speak the truth! It might upset Kim Jong-il!