[Editorial] North should recevie joint investigation team

Posted on : 2008-07-14 13:27 KST Modified on : 2008-07-14 13:27 KST

It is becoming increasingly likely the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at Mount Geumgang is going to increase inter-Korean discord and negatively influence the whole of inter-Korean relations. It is the North that has a lot of responsibility for this. The North Korean agency responsible for overseeing tourism by South Koreans expressed regret about the incident on July 12, but it then blamed the South and demanded that Seoul apologize and develop ways to make sure nothing like this would ever happen again. It also rejected demands from Seoul that there be a joint inquiry. The North has things more than a little backwards.

The North’s issue is that tourist Park Wang-ja broke with regulations in entering a military area, but tourists who have been there say there is no real warning sign and that anyone can enter the area just by walking over a little sand dune. Even if Park had deliberately broken the rules and climbed over a fence, the North Korean ((soldiers)) could easily have overpowered a woman, and it makes no sense that it was a matter of shoot to kill.

It therefore makes no sense for the North to be rejecting our government’s calls for a joint fact-finding inquiry. Only by figuring out what happened can it be determined whether, and if so how, responsible are the North Korean military, Hyundai Asan, and the individual tourist. Furthermore, the North’s explanation about what happened is very different from what one of our South Korean tourists said he saw. There are a lot of unanswered questions, such as just how deep into the military area Park ventured, and whether or not the claim the North Korean sentry fired a warning shot is factual or not. The North and South will have a hard time trusting each other unless things such as these are fully clarified.

This incident is fundamentally different from other cases in which the two sides have clashed for political reasons. Whatever the particulars of this case, at the essence of it is that an unarmed female South Korean tourist was shot and killed by a North Korean soldier. The North needs to accept the seriousness of the matter and actively cooperate in an inquiry. A joint team from North and South needs to have access to the site so that they can bring the objective truth to light. It is wrong for the North Korea government to be passing the buck to the North Korean government agency responsible for Mount Geumgang and Hyundai Asan.

Depending on the results of the inquiry, the North Korean military and Hyunai Asan need to be made to bear commensurate responsibility. Only by doing so can we prevent a similar, unfortunate incident from happening in the future of inter-Korean exchange, which will only grow in scale in time.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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