SEOUL: Preoccupied or indifferent, North Korea’s leader cut a distant figure at a parliament session that made clear the economy is in bad shape and the focus is still on the military despite renewed efforts to feed the people.

North Korean television showed rare video footage of Kim Jong-il as he strode onto the platform in the huge hall where delegates had gathered for Monday’s delayed annual meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

As members voted as one for this year’s budget — which included a 30-per cent boost in funding for agriculture and a smaller rise in defence spending – Mr Kim flicked through papers with furrowed brow and gazed into the middle distance.

North Korea experts said Mr Kim had good reason to look distracted — his isolated communist country is mired in a nuclear crisis.

“The Supreme People’s Assembly meeting is a superficial event, and what’s talked about the budget there is just the official part of the total,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a leading expert on North Korea at Seoul’s Dongguk University.

“There is a separate budget that is managed by the party, another by the military and there is also Kim Jong-il’s personal purse,” said Koh, noting the assembly’s budget accounts for perhaps less than half of actual spending.

The session opened a month later than scheduled without any explanation, although the country has been hit by an outbreak of bird flu and faces pressure to return to nuclear talks.

Economic analysts scrutinize the budget reports for signs of change or trouble. They noted Finance Minister Mun Il-bong said the tasks facing the North this year were “difficult and vast”.

Premier Pak Pong-ju, considered crucial to Pyongyang’s fledgling market reform efforts, said one of the top tasks was to “settle the food problem”, a reference to years of shortages that have stunted growth and killed more than a million.

“They are paying a lot of attention to agriculture,” said Kim Young-yoon, director of the Centre for the North Korean Economy at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification think tank.

Paik Hak-soon, director of the Centre for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute think tank near Seoul, agreed. An ethnic Korean scholar in China told him North Korean officials had been sent to rural areas for a year to propagate new ideas.

NO TALK ABOUT TALKS: The ministers also called for increased electricity output.

Yet it was as much the apparently unspoken that caught the attention of analysts south of the Demilitarised Zone that bisects the Korean peninsula.

Pak and Mun made clear defence remained a priority despite the need for funds elsewhere but no mention was made, at least in North Korean reports, about the stalled six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear arms ambitions.

“The increase in defence spending may appear slight,” said Kim of the Korea Institute for National Unification. “But the rise is compatible with the North’s policy of linking the economy very closely with national defence.”

Mun said the aim was “placing all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress”, the official KCNA news agency reported. Spending will go up from 15.6 percent of the budget to 15.9 percent. No absolute figures were given.

Koh said the absence of any reported reference to the nuclear crisis was noteworthy.

“It suggests there is some kind of meaningful development between the North and China related to the nuclear issue. The North probably saw it would be undesirable to make a resolution that would deteriorate the situation further,” he said.

Others were less sure there would be any progress soon on the crisis, despite recent talks between North Korea and ally China.

Paik Jin-hyun of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University said economic assistance to the North had dropped because of Pyongyang’s declared nuclear status.

Moody’s Investor Service said it still assessed the potential risks from the crisis to be low for South Korean credit ratings.

Patience with the North is wearing thin. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said on a trip to Germany “we should be red in the face with anger” about Pyongyang’s tactics.

Kim Jong-il, in his trademark green jacket and trousers, looked anything but angry in parliament. The film buff may have been casting his mind back to a recent premiere he attended of a light comedy by army performers.

“They successfully represented the true picture of Korean-style socialism,” KCNA reported. —Reuters