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President Park Geun-hye

President Park Geun-hye said on Mar. 15 that North Korea was “walking the path of self-destruction” if it does not change its pattern of “continued irrational provocations and strong hostility toward the international community.”

While presiding over a Cabinet meeting at the Blue House that day, Park said Pyongyang “routinely makes provocative statements about conducting preemptive nuclear strikes despite efforts by South Korea and the international community toward powerful sanctions.”

“Instead of the denuclearization the world is calling for, it is showing its intent to go ahead with nuclear test and continues to make reckless threats such as its short-range missile launch,” she added.

Park went on to say the North Korea threat “shows how intensely worried [Pyongyang] is about South Korea and the international community’s coordination on sanctions against it.”

“What is important now is for that framework of sanctions to be implemented properly on the ground,” she continued.

Park also ordered the relevant South Korean government ministries to develop and enforce lower-level statutes on the issue of human rights, an area where Pyongyang has been especially sensitive.

“It’s late in the game, but it’s fortunate that the North Korean human rights act passed the National Assembly eleven years after being put forward there,” she said, adding that it was a “matter of great significance not only for our fellow Koreans in the North but for peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula.”

She went on criticize politicians for “focusing only on their political logic by criticizing the administration’s economic policies and blocking key laws.”

“I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks it rings hollow when you refuse to listen to the people while talking about increasing jobs and tending to their livelihoods,” she said.

By Choi Hye-jung, staff reporter

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