[Editorial] North Korean committee’s dangerous statement

The North Korean government’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (Jo Pyeong Tong) issued a statement Wednesday, in which Pyongyang threatened to regard any South Korean attempt to participate in United Nations sanctions as the South’s negation of the joint statement that came from the 2000 inter-Korean summit. It said it would react accordingly. It went on to say that if rash and reckless sanctions ruin North-South relations, the South will be entirely responsible and pay a high price.

It is the North’s increasingly difficult situation resulting from pressure by the international community’s sanctions that is behind the committee’s statement. The North is already faced with a suspension of rice and fertilizer aid, so if the South takes additional measures by joining in international sanctions, its economic hardships will inevitably become worse. The committee’s statement specifically says, "our will and approach towards furthering North-South relations remains unchanged." We understand that to mean the North desperately needs the South’s assistance.

The approach of this statement, however, is not about furthering North-South relations. Instead, it weakens the position of supporters of the Roh administration’s engagement policy. Ever since Pyongyang fired missiles and again after it tested a nuclear device, the South’s old establishment conservatives have been campaigning to have engagement with the North scrapped. At the National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs, and Trade Committee yesterday, members of the Grand National Party demanded the government abandon its policy of engagement, saying that it had been nuclear test’s benefactor. Lee Jong-seok, who, as Unification Minister, had always been a proponent of engagement, resigned the other day, and not for reasons unrelated to this pressure. On the international front, other U.N. member states are participating in the sanctions, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used her visit to Seoul to pressure the South Korean government to participate in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). When the North issues statements at such a time, statements that take a threatening tone, this could make South Koreans harbor anxieties regarding security, which would mean the government has less room with which to maneuver.

If North Korea really wants to advance North-South relations in the spirit of the 2000 Joint Statement, it should immediately give up its nuclear ambitions and return to dialogue. Nuclear arms simply will not guarantee the North Korean system’s stability. Naturally, the South Korean government in the meantime needs to carefully decide how far it is going to participate in U.N. sanctions. If things go wrong and the situation leads to a confrontation between North and South, it is our own population that will have to deal with the ill effects. Our ability to exercise leadership in a crisis on the peninsula will be weakened. North and South both need to find intelligent ways to overcome the current crisis.