Gov't steps up efforts to encourage Korean language study overseas

Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector, had sought to create North Korea's interim government before he died last year, his adopted daughter said Thursday. Hwang, a former secretary of the North's ruling Workers' Party, drafted a plan on how to set up the organization as part of efforts to prepare for the potential unification with North Korea, Kim Suk-hyang said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency. Hwang also thought of creating a political party to help democracy in his former communist homeland in case the interim government failed to materialize, the daughter said. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been ruling his country with an iron fist after inheriting power from his father, the country's founder Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. Kim has taken steps to hand over power to his youngest son, Jong-un, since he suffered a stroke in 2008. Hwang, the key architecture of North Korea's guiding "juche" philosophy of self-reliance, defected to South Korea in 1997. Still, South Korea's previous liberal government restricted his public activities out of concerns that his harsh criticism of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could undermine fledging reconciliation with the North. The move prompted Hwang to seek to defect to the United States, though his plan never took off because it was compromised by security officials, his daughter said. Hwang traveled to the United States in 2003 and 2010 to testify on the totalitarian nature of North Korean leadership. He mocked North Korea's leader-in-waiting Kim Jong-un as "that little bastard" during his last trip to Washington in March 2010. North Korea denounced Hwang as "human scum" and later made botched assassination attempts before he died from heart failure last October.