North Korea marks birthday of 'undefeatable' leader Kim

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea marked the birthday of leader Kim Jong Il amid heightened nuclear tensions on Wednesday, comparing Kim to a daring porcupine routing an arrogant United States that swaggers like a tiger.

But South Korea dampened Pyongyang's festive mood, saying there will be no large-scale economic cooperation until the dispute over the communist North's nuclear weapons programs is resolved.

North Korea flouted the international community last Thursday by announcing it had nuclear weapons and was staying away from international nuclear talks where the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have urged it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The announcement was a key theme in North Korea's celebration of Kim's birthday this year, with its state-controlled media claiming that last week's "bombshell" declaration demonstrated Kim's "incomparable courage." Kim turned 63 Wednesday.

"The Americans swagger like a tiger around the world, but they whimper before our Republic as the tiger does before the porcupine," Pyongyang Radio said. "That's because we have our Great Leader Kim Jong Il, who is undefeatable."

The dispatch was alluding to a popular North Korean folk tale and TV animation where a porcupine defeats a tiger by sticking its quills in the tiger's nose.

To the outside world, the North's latest maneuver further isolated the impoverished country.

"North Korea must return to six-party talks as soon as possible," South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told a meeting of his top security ministers Wednesday. "If North Korea has anything to allege, it should make the allegations at the negotiating table."

North Korea has refused to rejoin the six-nation negotiations until Washington abandons what the North says is its "hostile" policy.

Earlier Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said he told U.S. officials during a weeklong trip to Washington that his country has no plans to begin large-scale economic cooperation with the North before North Korea agrees to end the nuclear dispute.

Still, Ban said South Korea would continue to provide "humanitarian" aid to the poverty-stricken state.

In the run-up to Wednesday's birthday, North Korea has escalated anti-American rhetoric and urged its people to rally around Kim at a time of heightened tensions with the United Sates.

"No matter how wild the U.S. imperialists may run, our country remains unfazed and the spirit of our army and people is sky-high," the North's main Rodong Shinmun daily wrote in a Wednesday editorial for the birthday, celebrated in the country as a national holiday.

In the capital Pyongyang, state-run TV on Wednesday displayed the usually quiet streets lined with banners wishing "good health and long life for the general," as Kim is commonly referred to as commander of the country's armed forces. Large crowds of North Koreans in colorful clothes and soldiers in uniform were shown dancing in Pyongyang squares.

Kim's Stalinist regime gave its elite feasts of pheasant and venison. Media reported the unseasonable blossoms of wild flowers, citing them as divine evidence that the nature was also celebrating the birthday, the "common holiday of the humankind." Around the country, exhibitions were held featuring Kimjongilia -- a red flower cultivated to blossom around Kim's birthday.

The country relies on outside aid to feed its people after suffering natural disasters. The disasters, along with inefficient communist management, began devastating the economy in the mid-1990s.

Yet Kim keeps a tight control on his population with the help of a personality cult.

"As long as we are led by Kim Jong Il ... endowed with outstanding commandership art and matchless courage and pluck, any anti-[North] plot of the U.S. imperialists will prove futile," Rodong Shinmun wrote.