hankyoreh

difficult at best before the incident

Four days after a tourist from South Korea to Mount Geumgang was shot to death, the government seems to have become reliant on Hyundai Asan to resolve the situation. After the North refused to accept a telephone message from the South demanding an investigation into the accident, the South Korean government disclosed the message in a briefing to the press on July 12. To communicate with the North, the government seems to have no choice but to issue statements via Hyundai Asan, the company that organized the tour, or the press.

A high-ranking government official admitted that a “cooling period” is necessary before the South can again attempt direct contact with the North, as pressure from the South could make the situation worse.

All unofficial channels of communication between South and North Korea have been cut off since the launch of President Lee Myung-bak’s administration. Independent lawmaker Park Jie-won, who played a leading role in the June 15 inter-Korean summit in 2000 as the presidential chief of staff for former President Kim Dae-jung, said that an inter-Korean hot line, which allowed for direct contact between top officials, established after the summit talks should have been maintained.

The Lee administration seems to have set itself up for a fall. Since Lee’s inauguration, his aides have been none too happy about the National Intelligence Service’s intervening in inter-Korean relations as they had during the inter-Korean summit in October 2007. President Lee was reported to have instructed the NIS to focus on collecting information on the North, instead of taking the initiative in the inter-Korean dialogue behind the scenes as it has done in the past. Thus, the NIS has abandoned efforts to establish a channel for inter-Korean relations.

The North, too, has made drastic changes in the officials in charge of negotiating with the South. A government official said that a considerable number of related high-ranking officials in the North have been replaced this year due to corruption.

In the past problems have been resolved by South and North Korean authorities through official channels. For the past four months, however, the North has rejected all forms of official contact and demands that the June 15 and October 4 joint declarations be implemented as a pre-cursor to resumption of inter-Korean dialogue.

The deterioration in inter-Korean relations has made dealing with the shooting incident more complicated, and the shooting, in turn, has worsened ties between Seoul and Pyongyang.

This means that it will take more time to resolve difficult problems through official channels, or that there may be limitations in getting problems solved.

To remedy this, the two countries need to communicate. Professor Kim Yong-hyeon of Dongguk University emphasized the necessity of establishing unofficial channels of communication between the South and the North to prevent sudden incidents from having a negative effect on either the situation at hand or inter-Korean relations as a whole. The government needs to re-establish unofficial channels of communication between North and South as soon as possible, Kim added.

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