hankyoreh

On Sept. 26, the Korea Coast Guard conducts a search operation for the remains and personal effects of a South Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries official who was killed by North Korean military on Sept. 22. (provided by the Korea Coast Guard)

The South Korean government has made an official request to North Korea to jointly investigate the death of a government employee who was shot by North Korean forces. Following an emergency meeting of national security-related Cabinet ministers presided over by President Moon Jae-in on Sept. 27, the Blue House explained that it was “requesting a joint investigation to swiftly determine the facts due to discrepancies in the circumstances and facts of the incident as determined respectively by the South and North.”

While the Blue House had remained cautious as recently as the same morning -- explaining that it had decided to “ask North Korea for an additional investigation, and request a joint investigation if necessary” -- it made the official proposal for an inter-Korean joint investigation that afternoon.

A potential catastrophe for inter-Korean relations may have been averted with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s swift official apology, but the shock to the South Korean public has not faded, and a host of tasks remain in terms of investigating the incident and retrieving the officials’ remains. We look forward to Pyongyang accepting the joint investigation proposal from a forward-thinking perspective and taking action to demonstrate the sincerity of Kim’s apology.

In a Sept. 27 piece, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said it was “about to organize a search operation in the southwestern waters and the western seashore,” adding that it was “even consider[ing] the procedures and ways of handing over any tide-brought corpse to the south side conventionally in case we find it during the operation.” While many of the questions surrounding whether the official’s remains were desecrated will be cleared up once they are retrieved, a joint investigation is still needed to address discrepancies between the South and North Korean sides’ claims about the circumstances behind the incident.

The recovery of the official’s body is an urgent task both for the sake of the investigation and in a humanitarian sense. The KCNA piece quoted a report that South Korea had “mobilized many vessels including warships to an action presumed to be a search operation and let them intrude into our territorial waters since Sept. 25.” It went on to say, “[W]e can never overlook any intrusion into our territorial waters and we seriously warn the south side against it.”

With both South and North Korea conducting large-scale search operations in the West Sea, some have voiced concerns that a clash could erupt. The two sides must take care not to let the tragic fatal shooting of this official escalate into a wasteful dispute over maritime boundaries. The best approach would be if both sides were able to agree on traveling back and forth over the Northern Limit Line (NLL) as part of a joint search operation. If Pyongyang really feels that COVID-19 prevention measures and other factors do not allow it to agree to a joint search, then the two sides will need to cooperate by sharing the necessary information. It’s also essential that the discontinued inter-Korean military communication hotline be restored to forestall any unintended clashes in the search process. It may also have a positive -- if limited -- effect for the joint search effort if the two sides are able to discuss their search plans over the military hotline.

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