President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea Predicts Changes in Peninsula

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Kim Jong-un visited with members of a tank division in a photograph released Sunday by North Korea's official news agency.

SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea vowed on Monday to “deal strongly with any provocations” from the North, predicting a “big change” on the divided Korean Peninsula following the death of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and his untested young son’s rise to power.

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In his nationally televised New Year’s speech, Mr. Lee did not elaborate on what change he foresaw. But policy-makers and analysts in the region are closely watching whether the designated successor in the North, Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be in his 20s, can consolidate his grip on power or will depend on caretakers and even regents to run the country, and how that might affect the country’s external policies, especially its nuclear weapons programs.

“A big change is expected in the situation on the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia following the death of Chairman Kim Jong-il,” Mr. Lee said. “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is now entering a new turning point. But there should be a new opportunity amid changes and uncertainty.”

Mr. Lee’s warning against North Korean provocations came amid fears that the North, as it has in the past, might attempt military or terrorist attacks on the South to reinforce internal unity at a time of sensitive transition and to boost a new leader’s military credentials.

Over the weekend, North Korea made Mr. Kim supreme commander of the 1.2 million-member Korean People’s Army, a move considered crucial to protecting his power, and issued a series of statements calling Mr. Lee’s government in Seoul “national traitors” and vowing “punishment” and “revenge.”

Mr. Lee, though, kept open the possibility of inter-Korean talks despite North Korea’s repeated statements that it had no intention of dealing with his government.

“It is South and North Korea, before anyone else, that must try to achieve the task of building peace, security and reunification on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “We are leaving a window of opportunity open. If North Korea shows its attitude of sincerity, a new era on the Korean Peninsula can be opened.”

He urged North Korea to suspend its nuclear activities, including its uranium-enrichment program, so that six-nation talks can resume to discuss eliminating its nuclear weapons programs in return for security guarantees and economic assistance for the North.

Mr. Lee’s speech came a day after North Korea issued a New Year’s Day statement that sought to cement support for Mr. Kim and his family’s dynastic rule. It also lambasted South Korea for not expressing official condolences for Kim Jong-il’s death.

In his speech, Mr. Lee called taming inflation and creating jobs two of his top goals as he entered his last year in office. (By law, he cannot run in the next presidential election in December.) He also apologized for a recent series of corruption scandals that implicated his former aides and relatives.

“While economic growth is important, I will focus on bringing consumer prices down,” he said, promising to keep inflation below 3.5 percent this year. South Korea’s consumer prices rose 4.2 percent last month.

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Kiro Gligorov, Macedonia President in 1990s, Dies at 94

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His death was confirmed by an aide, Zivko Kondev.

Mr. Gligorov became president of Macedonia in January 1991 when it was still a Yugoslav republic. He led his countrymen through a referendum in which they voted for independence, and the territory of 2.1 million people became the only republic to secede from Yugoslavia without a war. He served two consecutive terms, leaving office in November 1999.

Severely injured in an assassination attempt in October 1995, Mr. Gligorov emerged from a roughly four-month hospital stay with deep facial scars. A bomb, which targeted his car as he headed to work in the capital, Skopje, cost him an eye and killed his driver and a bystander. No suspects were ever arrested.

The early days of Mr. Gligorov’s presidency were overshadowed by a bitter dispute with Greece over the newly independent nation’s name — a dispute that continues to this day.

Greece objected to the use of the name Macedonia, saying it implied territorial ambitions on its own northern province of the same name. It also objected to a symbol on the new country’s flag and articles of the Macedonian Constitution that Greece believed suggested territorial claims.

Greece imposed a crippling 19-month embargo on its northern neighbor. In 1995, the Macedonian government signed an accord with Greece agreeing to remove the symbol from its flag and revising some articles of the Constitution, but talks on the country’s name have made little progress. In official bodies such as the United Nations, the country is known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Mr. Gligorov also faced domestic unrest, with the country’s large ethnic Albanian minority pressing for greater cultural and political autonomy.

The demands eventually boiled over into armed conflict in early 2001, about a year and a half after Mr. Gligorov left office. The two sides eventually signed a peace accord under which minorities were guaranteed greater rights, and NATO peacekeepers were sent to the country.

Born in the central Macedonian town of Stip on May 3, 1917, Mr. Gligorov graduated from law school in Belgrade and was working as a lawyer for a private bank in Skopje when World War II broke out. He joined the partisan movement fighting against the Nazi occupation from its early days.

He is survived by two daughters and a son. His wife, Nada, died in 2009.

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China’s President Pushes Back Against Western Culture

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Mr. Hu’s words signaled that a major policy initiative announced last October would continue well into 2012.

The essay, which was signed by Mr. Hu and based on a speech he gave in October, drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating culture war. It was published in Seeking Truth, a magazine founded by Mao Zedong as a platform for establishing Communist Party principles.

“We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” Mr. Hu said, according to a translation by Reuters.

“We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond,” he added.

Those measures, Mr. Hu said, should be centered on developing cultural products that can draw the interest of the Chinese and meet the “growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people.”

Chinese leaders have long lamented the fact that Western expressions of popular culture and art seem to overshadow those from China. The top grossing films in China have been “Avatar” and “Transformers 3,” and the music of Lady Gaga is as popular here as that of any that of any Chinese pop singer. In October, at the annual plenum of the party’s Central Committee, where Mr. Hu gave his speech, officials discussed the need for bolstering the “cultural security” of China.

“The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China’s international status,” Mr. Hu said in his essay, according to another translation.

“The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak,” he said.

Mr. Hu did not address the widespread assertion by Chinese artists and intellectuals that state censorship is what prevents artists and their works from reaching their full potential. Last week, Han Han, a novelist and China’s most popular blogger, discussed the issue in an online essay called “On Freedom.”

“The restriction on cultural activities makes it impossible for China to influence literature and cinema on a global basis or for us culturati to raise our heads up proud,” Han Han wrote.

The publication of Mr. Hu’s essay and other articles in Seeking Truth on bolstering China’s cultural power signaled that this would be a central initiative in 2012, which is a transition year for the Chinese leadership as seven of the top nine party members step down from the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Mr. Hu appeared keen to enshrine the culture drive as a final defining moment of his decade-long tenure at China’s helm.

The Central Committee meeting in October established the ideological foundation for a tightening of a cultural sphere that is only now beginning to unfold. Right after the meeting, officials announced a sweeping new policy to wipe scores of so-called entertainment shows off the air. That took effect on Sunday. Television stations have been racing to come up with new programs that will be deemed “socially responsible” by the censors.

Last month, officials in Beijing and other cities ordered Internet companies to ensure that people posting on microblogs, called Sina Weibo in Chinese, had registered their accounts using their real names, though they could still post under an alias. Officials have been putting pressure on executives and editors running the microblog platforms to self-censor, and many microblog users say the microblogs have been getting less interesting.

At the same time, China has been making a push to increase its cultural influence abroad, or its “soft power.” The government has opened up Confucius Institutes around the world to aid foreigners in learning Chinese. The state is also lavishing financing on opening operations of large state-run news organizations, including Xinhua, the state news agency, and China Central Television in cities around the world. Officials from those organizations say they hope their version of the world events becomes as common as those from Western news organizations.

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