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NKorea reshuffles cabinet to focus on economy
AFP - Wednesday, January 7
SEOUL (AFP) - - Communist North Korea has replaced at least nine cabinet ministers in a major reshuffle seen as a new bid to revive its stagnant economy, Seoul officials said Tuesday.
South Korea's unification ministry, which closely monitors the North's official media, said Pyongyang had replaced its finance, trade and commerce ministers.
New faces were also being brought in at ministries overseeing the metal industry, electricity sector, railways, forestry and fisheries. There was also to be a new minister-level economic cooperation commission chief.
Unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun told a briefing Seoul could identify five of the nine new cabinet members in the secretive state, adding more could be replaced.
Analysts in Seoul said the North, which suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s, was aiming at economic recovery.
"The reshuffle reflected discontent by the North's leadership with the slower-than-expected economic recovery," said Kim Yong-Hyun, a North Korea expert and professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.
North Korea Monday held a mass rally of 100,000 people in the capital Pyongyang to launch a drive to rebuild its economy, state media said.
In a New Year joint editorial, the North stressed its "far-reaching target to open the gate to a thriving nation" in 2012, the centenary of the birth of its late founding leader Kim Il-Sung.
Top leader Kim Jong-Il also visited a power plant in the eastern city of Wonsan, making a third New Year public appearance, to call for greater electricity production, official media said Tuesday.
"It is one of the most important issues of achieving rapid progress of the national economy to give definite priority to the electricity production," Kim said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
The overhaul represents a major change in the North's ministerial lineup, changing nearly a quarter of the 37-member cabinet.
Officials at the unification ministry said the North had also made some changes to key military and ruling party posts, which were yet to be confirmed.
The ministry did not say when the reshuffle took place.
North Korea, which operates on a planned economy, was ravaged by famine which killed hundreds of thousands of people in the mid to late-1990s and still relies on foreign aid to feed millions.
Outdated facilities, a crippling energy shortage and a prolonged nuclear standoff with the West have complicated efforts for economic revival.
In 2002 the regime introduced limited economic reforms but rolled them back three years later, apparently fearful of relaxing its grip.
Late last year the North clamped down on fast-growing free markets for fear they could loosen the regime's grip, observers said.
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