Recent signs indicate that further turbulence is expected when North Korean leader Kim Jong Il hands the reins of power to his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, a high-ranking North Korean defector said Thursday.
Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Kim Kwang Jin, a former banker in North Korea who defected with his family in 2003, said the hermit regime's recent attacks, including the fatal sinking of a South Korean naval ship and the shelling of a South Korean island, show the North's "cycle of provocation is getting shorter and more aggressive, offensive and dangerous."
Kim said that, with a dead-end economy and a history of famine, the North is having difficulty justifying a succession and using the provocations to divert the public's attention from internal discontent to outside "enemies."