Pres. Park speaks on both N. Korea and Japan in Independence Day address

Posted on : 2014-03-03 15:09 KST Modified on : 2014-03-03 15:09 KST
Japan is strongly criticized by Park, who asked North Korea to regularly hold reunions for divided families
 Mar. 1. (by Kang Chang-kwang
Mar. 1. (by Kang Chang-kwang

By Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent

President Park Geun-hye delivered a strongly worded criticism of the Japanese government‘s rightward shift in a ceremony to mark the 95th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement.

“The more [Japan] denies history, the sadder it becomes and the more it backs itself into a corner,” Park said in her Mar. 1 address at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul.

She also urged Pyongyang to allow reunions among divided family members in North and South Korea to become a regular event.

“Meetings between divided families should no longer be some kind of ‘special event,’” Park said in her address.

With its calls for North Korea to “build trust toward peace and cooperation,” the 2014 address marked a step forward from last year’s address, which came just after Park’s inauguration. At the same time, her remarks on Japan made it clear that Seoul would maintain its current distance from Tokyo, with Park insisting there would be “no reconciliation without reflection.”

Analysts took this as signaling that Park plans to hold on to the initiative in Korean Peninsula issues by continuing dialogue with Pyongyang, while coordinating with China and the US and taking advantage of negative international opinion in response to Japan’s far-right lurch.

For last year’s March 1 address, Park also directed stern messages at Japan and North Korea, which had carried out its third nuclear test not long before. In the case of North Korea, she called for a “halt to provocations” and warned of a “stern response.” In Japan’s case, she remarked that “the relationship of aggressor and victim hasn’t changed in a thousand years” and urged Japan’s leaders to “act responsibly.”

For the latest speech, Park made direct reference to the comfort women issue, which she had avoided last year, and explicitly addressed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine and the Japanese administration’s ongoing push to amend the Peace Constitution and review a 1993 statement by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono apologizing for the drafting of comfort women as sexual slaves to the Japanese military.

“There are now just 55 surviving comfort women, women who have lived a lifetime of bitter injustice and grief,” Park said during the address. “Their wounds should rightly be healed.”

She went on to declare that “historical truth is the testimony of the living.”

“To ignore the voices of living witnesses and refuse to recognize them solely because of one’s own political interests is to invite isolation,” she added.

Park also said that the progress made between South Korea and Japan despite their painful history was “the result of a historical willingness to promote good neighborly relations with neighboring countries based on the Peace Constitution, and to reflect on colonial rule and invasions through the Murayama Statement [of 1995] and Kono Statement and move forward into the future.”

In addition to suggesting regular reunions of divided families, Park stressed the need for peaceful reunification with North Korea and its abandonment of nuclear weapons.

“I look forward to South and North building trust by keeping the small promises, climbing the stairway to reunification one step at a time,” she said. “A nation made one, and a unified Korean Peninsula, would be the culmination of the spirit that drove the March 1 Movement, with its cries for the nation’s independence and pride.”

Park went on to say that a unified peninsula would be “a heart of peace linking Eurasia to Northeast Asia.”

“As we stand on the road to a new age of peace and cooperation, I urge North Korea to lay down its nuclear weapons and choose the road of shared development and peace for South and North,” she added.

 

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