South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday outlined a vision for unification with North Korea and proposed opening a working group for dialogue, even as tensions with Pyongyang remain high, UPI reports.
Yoon outlined his plan in an address on the occasion of South Korea’s Liberation Day, which marks the end of Japan’s colonial rule in 1945, saying “complete liberation remains an unfinished task for us.” He said:
The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation. Only when a unified free and democratic nation rightfully owned by the people is established across the entire Korean Peninsula will we finally have complete liberation.
Yoon’s unification plan includes changing the situation inside North Korea by improving human rights and access to information from the outside world. He also claimed:
It is also important to help awaken the people of North Korea to the value of freedom. Testimonials from numerous North Korean defectors show that our radio and TV broadcasts helped make them aware of the false propaganda and instigations emanating from the North Korean regime.
The South Korean president called on allies to strengthen international support for unification and suggested the establishment of an “Inter-Korean Working Group” for dialogue with the North. Yoon also added:
This body could take up any issue ranging from relieving tensions to economic cooperation, people-to-people and cultural exchanges and disaster and climate-change responses.
The plan comes at a time when prospects for unification seem least likely. In February, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the South a “major enemy” and publicly called for constitutional change, rejecting the long-standing official goal of reunification.
The South Korean public has also lost its desire to unite with North Korea, especially the younger generation. In a recent poll, more than 60 per cent of respondents in their 20s and 30s said unification was unnecessary.
Analysts say Seoul’s proposal is unlikely to lure North Korea to the negotiating table. Sean King, senior vice president and East Asia expert at New York-based consulting firm Park Strategies, said:
The creation of an Inter-Korean North/South Working Group will surely fall on deaf ears in Pyongyang. Yoon’s clearly proposing unification by absorption, not a coming together of two equals. This speech was largely about rhetorical positioning on Yoon’s part – well intended but not feasible under current realities.
Pyongyang has not stopped its weapons testing and hostile rhetoric over the past three years, and in recent months a Cold War-style psychological warfare has unfolded in border areas.
Since early June, North Korea has sent thousands of balloons filled with scraps of paper, torn clothes and dung to the South, including one that spilled rubbish on the Yoon presidential compound. Meanwhile, Seoul resumed propaganda broadcasts over loudspeakers around the demilitarised zone, transmitting K-pop songs and South Korean news and information across the border.
Earlier this week, North Korean state media denounced the growing trilateral security relationship between the US, South Korea and Japan, warning that the Asian allies would become “cannon fodder” for a nuclear attack.
