hankyoreh

President Lee Myung-bak was believed to recently have reprimanded senior officials in charge of diplomacy and national security, asking, in effect, why they were standing idle while North Korea continued to release harsh rhetoric about him.

In a meeting with ministers related to national security at the presidential office of the Blue House on October 18, President Lee urged them to drop the perception that the South Korean economy would be negatively affected by the increasing tension with North Korea, according to remarks made by multiple government sources on November 2. Lee also ordered that a working-level meeting on energy and the economy, chaired by South Korea, be halted unless there is progress in the six-party negotiations on the North Korean nuclear issue, the government sources said.

Related to this, another government official said, “President Lee thinks that the United States’ delisting North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, an agreement made after a meeting in Pyongyang between North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, is the wrong response to the North’s threats.”

Every Thursday, the government holds a meeting of high-ranking officials to coordinate policy on North Korea, diplomacy and national security. The meeting, the “Council on the Coordination of Diplomacy and Security Policy,” is usually chaired by Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, so it was very unusual for President Lee to have chaired the meeting on October 18. The agenda included a discussion on the South Korean government’s response to developments in North Korea following the North’s removal from the terror list on October 11 and the North Korean government’s return to disabling its key nuclear facility in Yongbyon on October 12, a government official said.

The meeting was the first after the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s Workers’ Party, warned in a commentary that Pyongyang would soon “make an important decision, including severing all relations with the South.”

Present at the October 18 meeting were: Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong, National Intelligence Service Director Kim Sung-ho, Vice Defense Minister Kim Jong-cheon (Kim stood in for Defense Minister Lee Sang-who, who was in the United States for an annual security meeting), Presidential Secretary for Diplomacy and Security Kim Seong-hwan and Presidential Adviser for External Strategy Kim Tae-hyo.

When asked by The Hankyoreh to confirm the remarks made by President Lee at the meeting, a Blue House official said, “In principle, any remarks made by the president at the security-related ministers’ meeting can not be confirmed.” The official said, however, that the information The Hankyoreh asked the Blue House to confirm had been interpreted narrowly, which could serve to distort the intent of the government’s foreign policy.

The South Korean government’s policy on North Korea has shown signs of becoming more conservative since the October 18 meeting. Immediately after the U.S. delisted North Korea from its list of terrorism sponsors on October 11 and the North resumed disablement of the Yongbyon facility the following day, the government had issued a statement welcoming progress in the six-party talks and indicating a willingness to readjust its North Korean policy. Kim Ho-nyoun, the Unification Ministry spokesman, said on October 13 that the government “was reviewing whether to readjust business projects with North Korea in the wake of the United States’ delisting it from the terrorism list.” However, the unification ministry spokesman has not said anything about that possibility since the Oct. 18 meeting.

Meanwhile, South Korea also appears to be dragging its feet on two other potential commitments. North Korea asked South Korea to provide equipment and materials to repair a military communications network in the West Sea region at a working-level military meeting on October 27, but the South Korean government has not yet said whether it will accept the proposal. South Korea also agreed to provide 3,000 tons of steel to North Korea in line with disablement of the Yongbyon facility under the six-party framework, but no date has been set to ship the steel.

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