Seoul to soon restore ties with Pyongyang: unification minister

Posted on : 2006-12-21 16:43 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST

The South Korean government may resume its humanitarian assistance to North Korea in the near future as part of efforts to mend soured ties with the communist nation, the country's point man on North Korea said Thursday.

"The government has a principle to resume the North-South dialogue at the earliest date possible," Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung told reporters.

Lee was the highest, if not the first, South Korean official to express hope for resuming the country's dialogue with the communist North, which has been stalled since a high-profile meeting in July.

The relationship between the divided Koreas was nearly severed after Seoul suspended shipments of its humanitarian assistance to the North to punish the communist nation for test-launching ballistic missiles in July.

He said no date has been set for the resumption of inter-Korean talks, but his remarks followed a special lecture for a group of policy advisors to the president, in which he said the government's humanitarian assistance to the North would soon be resumed or "resolved."

"What is unfortunate is that the dialogue between the North and South Korea and (South Korea's) humanitarian assistance is still suspended," the minister said in a lecture for the 500-member standing committee of the presidential National Unification Advisory Council.

"But I believe this will soon be resolved," he added.

Tension soared after Pyongyang set off an underground nuclear explosion on Oct. 9, but the minister said his country and its people have successfully managed the situation.

The remarks came amid resumed talks in Beijing between North Korea and five other nations, including South Korea and the United States, to put a peaceful end to the prolonged dispute over the communist nation's nuclear weapons program.

The minister said an early resumption of inter-Korean dialogue was needed to support the six-party nuclear talks, which resumed Monday in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus caused by a North Korean boycott.

But he also said exchanges and dialogue between the Koreas need to be maintained regardless of difficulties in the nuclear disarmament talks.

"I believe inter-Korean talks could help (resolve the nuclear dispute) if they can help resolve difficulties in the six-party talks and if an agreement reached between the Koreas works to support the six-party negotiations," he said. The nuclear negotiations are also attended by Japan, Russia and host China.

The number of South and North Koreans crossing the inter-Korean border has already topped last year's total of 88,000 as of the end of last month, while the amount of cross-border trade between the two has reached more than US$1.26 billion, also surpassing the record $1 billion mark set last year, the minister said.

"This, at the end, can be said to have come from the mood for reconciliation and cooperation between the North and the South," Lee told the policy advisors.

Lee also called for continued economic cooperation projects with the communist North in the latter's border town of Kaesong and the east coast resort of Mount Geumgang, an apparent move to dismiss U.S. criticism toward the joint projects accused of funneling funds to the North's communist regime, if not directly financing Pyongyang's nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programs.

"Even if we add all the money paid to North Korea in admission fees (for South Korean tourists) to the Mount Geumgang resort and wages to North Korean workers at the Kaesong industrial complex, it only adds up to less than $20 million a year," the minister said.

The amount, Lee said, "only accounts for 1.4 percent of the hard currency North Korea earns in a year" through trade and other means.

North Korea is accused of manufacturing and circulating large amounts of counterfeit U.S. dollars.

The communist state left the six-party talks in November 2005 in protest of restrictions imposed by the United States on a Macau bank suspected of helping North Korea launder counterfeit U.S. dollars.

Seoul, Dec. 21 (Yonhap News)