North Korea has been hardening its rhetoric against President Park Geun-hye’s policy drive for reunification as Seoul intensifies diplomatic efforts to drum up international support amid Pyongyang’s deepening isolation.
Observers say that the North’s increasingly harsh criticism of Park’s efforts for reunification could hurt the emerging mood for cross-border dialogue and further raise uncertainties for her “peninsular trust-building” policy.
The communist regime’s denunciation grew more acrimonious after Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping held summit talks in Beijing on Sept. 2, where she reiterated that early reunification of the peninsula would contribute to regional peace and prosperity.
Last Saturday, Pyongyang described Park’s request for Beijing’s support for her reunification initiative as “disgusting begging” for getting “foreign forces’ consent” for what it called Seoul’s plot to unify the two Koreas’ political systems.
“The South would end up damaging the emerging mood for stability and improvement in cross-border relations as the South intensifies its diplomacy to depend on foreign forces to realize its delusion for reunification,” the Rodong Sinmun, the daily of the North’s Workers’ party, said in a commentary titled “Seoul’s unification diplomacy that foments distrust and confrontation.”
Seoul officials said that as Pyongyang has remained reluctant to discuss its denuclearization and participate in the efforts to lay the groundwork for reunification, applying more pressure on the regime was inevitable.
Yet, analysts say that Seoul should pay more attention to guiding the unification discourse in a direction that promotes the peaceful coexistence of the two Koreas, rather than indicating that the North would be absorbed into the South’s democratic system.
“Pyongyang appears to believe, as it did in the past, that Seoul’s policy aims to encourage a regime collapse and pursue the unification of the peninsula by absorbing the North into South Korea’s governing system,” said Chang Yong-seok, a senior analyst at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification.
“For genuine bilateral dialogue to occur, one should recognize the other side. Who would be willing to build trust with the one seemingly pursuing the demise of the other side? Creating the image that the South regards the North as a genuine partner for dialogue and cooperation is important for now.”
Park Hyeong-jung, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, noted that the North’s toughened rhetoric against Park’s reunification drive reflects its increasing discontentment over its diplomatic isolation.
“President Park’s diplomacy for reunification could also be seen by the North as a strategy to further isolate the communist regime and to pressure it to give up its nuclear ambitions,” said researcher Park. “When its relations with China seem to remain shaky, Park’s discussions with Xi over reunification might well strike a sour note in the North.”
Seoul’s stepped-up diplomacy to encourage Pyongyang to return to the denuclearization talks is likely to aggravate friction with Pyongyang, observers said, noting that despite the friction, the North might take more caution as it needs to improve ties with Seoul to ease its isolation.
Seoul’s top nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kuk is now in the U.S. to hold talks this week with the top envoys of the member nations of the U.N. Security Council and his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim to discuss multilateral efforts to pressure the North to give up its nuclear program.
Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul will deliver a plenary speech Tuesday at the ongoing general meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. During the speech, he is to call for international cooperation and support for the South’s efforts to denuclearize the North.
By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)
