Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho on Friday called on North Korea to respond to South Korea’s offer for an official dialogue channel, stressing that South Korea does not seek unification by absorption.
Kim made the call a day after President Yoon Suk Yeol proposed to North Korea the establishment of a working-level dialogue channel that can “take up any issue” in an address marking Liberation Day.
Yoon unveiled a vision for liberal democracy-based unification with North Korea and pledged to expand the inflow of outside information into the North as part of action plans to implement it.
“As the president proposed the establishment of a dialogue channel between the two Koreas, (I) am calling on North Korea to accept it,” Kim told a press briefing.
The minister said South Korea is open to discussing any topics, including North Korea’s denuclearization, humanitarian issues and inter-Korean exchanges.
“To this end, the inter-Korean liaison communication line and the military hotlines that North Korea unilater
ally suspended should be resumed,” he said.
Dismissing views that North Korea will not accept Seoul’s offer amid strained inter-Korean ties, Kim said, “North Korea will carefully review it.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has defined inter-Korean relations as those between “two states hostile to each other” and called South Korea his country’s “invariable principal enemy.”
Minister Kim also rejected criticism that Yoon’s unification vision effectively includes elements to push for unification by absorption.
“If unification by absorption is defined as unification through change in status quo by force, that is not a policy that the government pursues,” Kim said. “We seek a gradual and peaceful unification, not unification by absorption.”
Critics said Yoon’s unification vision does not include ways to promote reconciliation and cooperation with North Korea even though the government said the initiative inherited the spirit of the country’s official unification formula unveiled in 1994.
The National Commun
ity Unification Formula (NCUF) is based on three principles: seeking independence, peace and democracy. The three-stage vision calls for the pursuit of reconciliation and cooperation, the creation of a Korean commonwealth and the completion of a unified country.
“Currently, it is very difficult to seek reconciliation and cooperation (with North Korea), a starting point of the NCUF. The government will make efforts to create such conditions through (the latest) unification vision and its action plan,” Kim said.
Meanwhile, the minister vowed the government will work to help North Korans better access outside information via “various” channels.
“(The government) has been supporting the civilian sector’s various projects to develop content. The unification ministry will continue to make efforts to support such activities,” he said.
“Various measures (to promote the inflow of outside information) are being discussed at the level of the international community and foreign nongovernmental organizations,” he said
, without disclosing further details.
North Korea has been stepping up surveillance and punishment of its people by implementing three so-called evil laws to prevent North Koreans from accessing outside information.
The 2020 law on the rejection of “the reactionary ideology and culture” calls for punishing those who bring outside culture and information with 10 years of hard labor. Punishment is tougher in the case of those watching and distributing South Korean dramas, movies and music, with even public executions carried out.
Source:Yonhapi News Agency