Administration under fire for bungled response to alleged N. Korean mine

Posted on : 2015-08-12 17:34 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Three concerned ministries all failed to coordinate and offer a cohesive investigation and explanation to the public
 Aug. 11. (by Kim Seong-gwang
Aug. 11. (by Kim Seong-gwang

The Ministry of Unification, Ministry of National Defense, and Blue House are facing criticism for their lack of coordination in the week after two South Korean soldiers were serious injured by a wooden box mine allegedly planted by North Korea.

Some are singling out the Blue House Office of National Security in particular for failing to execute its role as a “control tower” overseeing cooperative relations with North Korea and security.

Spokesman Min Kyung-wook gave the Blue House’s assessment of the mine situation on Aug. 11.

“This was a clear provocation in which North Korean forces illegally crossed the Military Demarcation Line and planted a mine in a wooden box,” Min said.

“This provocation by North Korea is a blatant violation of the armistice agreement and the non-aggression agreement between South and North, and we strongly urge North Korea to apologize for that provocation and punish those responsible,” he added.

The remarks marked the first official response from the Blue House in the week since the Aug. 4 explosion.

No previous statement had been forthcoming from the Blue House on Aug. 10, the day the Ministry of National Defense’s official announcement on the incident. President Park Geun-hye did not address the mine issue at a senior Blue House secretaries’ meeting that day, commenting only on Pyongyang’s announcement of a change to its standard time, which she criticized as “a very dismaying announcement at a time when we have been proposing various measures to restore inter-Korean dialogue and consistency.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Unification continued making attempts to send a written proposal to North Korea for senior-level talks every morning from Aug. 5 - the day after the explosion - until Aug. 10. Also on Aug. 5, Park delivered an address at a groundbreaking ceremony for the South Korean section of the Gyeongwon Railroad in Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province, in which she voiced hopes for North Korea to “trust in our sincerity and boldly join us on the path to inter-Korean reconciliation.”

At the same time, the Ministry of National Defense was requesting a reporting embargo after relating the “apparent detonation of a North Korean mine” on Aug. 6. Two days later, possible response measures were discussed at a Blue House National Security Council meeting with Defense Minister Han Min-koo in attendance, and the situation was reported directly to Park by National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin, sources said.

The resulting situation was one in which the Ministry of Unification continued making dialogue proposals and Park called on Pyongyang to “join in inter-Korean reconciliation” over the same week that authorities were investigating the explosion of a DMZ mine that seriously injured soldiers and was believed to have been planted by North Korea. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the Unification Ministry issued one of its proposals for senior-level talks at the same time that the Defense Ministry was giving a briefing on the mine blast.

The confusion has led some to criticize the Blue House National Security Office for neglecting its duties as a control tower on foreign relations and national security. Some are also calling the shift to a more rigid stance from the Blue House on Aug. 11 a belated attempt to present a united front after the earlier inconsistencies.

“The biggest problem has been the lack of consistency in the administration’s response,” said University of North Korean Studies professor Yang Moo-jin.

“If the Blue House National Security Office had been doing its job, the administration would have presented a united front from the beginning and explained things to the public,” Yang argued - suggesting a lack of consistency from the administration was to blame for the failure in coordinating the three areas of preventing the incident, investigating it thoroughly, and avoiding future incidents.

Kim Jong-dae, editor-in-chief of the journal Defense 21+, delivered a similar assessment.

“If this [explosion] had been deemed a provocation by North Korea, there could have been response measures such as an emergency announcement for the related army division and a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff crisis measures team,” Kim said. “Instead, we got a bizarre announcement six days later about how the medical evacuation was a success.”

“We need to find out what the content of the initial report was and how the military responded to it,” Kim argued.

The message from the Blue House has been to “wait and see,” warning of “stern measures” to be announced after the Defense Ministry releases its investigation findings. It has also argued that efforts toward dialogue will have to continue separately even amid the stern response to the provocation.

“We’re not going to turn our backs on North Korea forever,” said a Blue House official. “We’re going to have to keep working toward interchange and cooperation.”

 

By Choi Hye-jung and Kim Oi-hyun, staff reporters

 

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