N. Korea Renews Demands For Improved Ties With South
- February 3, 2012
- World News
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North Korea on Thursday issued a long list of strident demands, including the cancellation of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, that it said South Korea should meet before ties could improve between the two Koreas.
By repeating demands that the South has already rejected, North Korea appeared to shift the blame to Seoul one day after a U.S. assistant secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, urged it to improve ties with the government in Seoul before expecting a better relationship with Washington.
The policy department of the North’s influential National Defence Commission issued the nine demands in the form of a questionnaire.
They included the old – like the termination of joint military drills and the repeal of the South’s anti-Communist National Security Law – as well as newer demands, like an apology from President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea for not expressing official condolences on the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in December.
North Korea also insisted that Seoul stop criticizing it for an artillery attack on a South Korean island that killed four South Koreans in 2010. The government in Pyongyang has argued that the attack was provoked by a South Korean military drill around disputed border waters.
Relations between the two Koreas plummeted after Mr. Lee, a conservative, took office in Seoul in 2008 and suspended his two liberal predecessors’ promise to make large investments in the North as a way of promoting political reconciliation. Mr. Lee wanted the North to halt its nuclear-weapons program first.
North Korea reiterated on Thursday that South Korea must reinstate the earlier summit agreements between Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee’s two predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.
“The Lee Myung-bak clique of traitors should stop babbling about improving ties and reflect upon whether it deserves to be a dialogue partner,” North Korea said.
“Our government doesn’t think it necessary to take pains to respond to these issues raised by the North,” said an official at the South’s Unification Ministry, a government agency in charge of relations with North Korea. “It’s regrettable that North Korea makes these absurd demands as part of its propaganda.”
Both the United States and South Korea have recently called on North Korea to abandon its hostility, saying that an opportunity exists for improved ties.
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/n-korea-renews-demands-for-improved-ties-with-south/article2324955/