N. Korean leader tours factories following nuke message

SEOUL, Jan. 14 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il inspected machinery
plants as part of his stepped-up economic drive, the North's media said
Wednesday, following Pyongyang's call on the incoming U.S. administration to
normalize bilateral relations.

Amid a global economic downturn and suspension of aid from South Korea, North
Korea has reinvigorated its slogan of "self-reliance" to rebuild the nation's
frail industrial infrastructure and resolve its chronic food shortages.
During his visit to the Kum Song Tractor Plant, Kim expressed his "belief that
the workers of the plant would invent and produce more modern farm machines
invariably under the uplifted banner of self-reliance and realize the
comprehensive mechanization of agriculture as early as possible," the North's
Korean Central News Agency said in its English language report.
Kim recalled the days when workers "produced with empty hands the first tractor
in the country in the postwar difficult period," it said. Pyongyang recently
restored the postwar Chollima Movement, initially launched by the nation's
founder Kim Il-sung in 1956 to mobilize citizens to rebuild the country from the
debris of the Korean War.
The North's leader also visited the Taean Heavy Machine Complex, the report said.
In its first official message to the new U.S. administration, North Korea
reaffirmed its position that it would not give up its nuclear drive until
Washington should normalize diplomatic relations with the communist state.
Pyongyang also called on the U.S. to remove it nuclear umbrella over South Korea
maintained since the Korean War.
"When the U.S. nuclear threat is removed and South Korea is cleared of its
nuclear umbrella, we will also feel no need to keep nuclear weapons," the North's
foreign ministry spokesman said late Tuesday in Pyongyang's first official
message to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who will be sworn in next week.
U.S. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton said she will engage North
Korea bilaterally as well as through the six-party talks to address its alleged
nuclear proliferation.
"It is a framework that the president-elect and I believe has merit," Clinton
said of the six-party talks at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. "But it also provides an opportunity, as Secretary Rice has
testified before this committee, for bilateral contact as well between North
Korea and the United States."
North Korea has nearly completed disablement of its plutonium-producing reactor
in Yongbyon under an aid-for-denuclearization deal signed with South Korea, the
U.S., China, Russia and Japan in 2007. But the latest round of the six-way talks
ended without progress in December due to a dispute over how to verify North
Korea's past nuclear activities.
South Korea's deputy chief nuclear envoy, Hwang Joon-kook, will visit North Korea
later this week to discuss the possible purchase of unused fuel rods stored at
the Yongbyon nuclear plant that is being disabled under the multilateral deal.
Hwang is the first official in the conservative Lee Myung-bak administration to
be invited by Pyongyang.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)