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Members of World Vision

After receiving its first briefing from the Unification Ministry on May 26, President Moon Jae-in’s governance and planning advisory committee urged the Ministry to take a more active role in improving inter-Korean relations. On the same day, the Ministry approved an application by a private-sector organization for contact with North Korea for the first time in a year and four months and launched the new government’s efforts to reestablish inter-Korean relations, which are currently severed.

“The Unification Ministry has fallen on hard times, and inter-Korean relations have deteriorated over the past nine or ten years. I have very mixed emotions,” said Lee Su-hoon, chair of the advisory committee’s diplomacy and security subcommittee, on the morning of May 26 before the briefing at the advisory committee’s office in Seoul. The transitional committee for the Lee Myung-bak administration (2008-13) considered shutting down the Unification Ministry altogether, and it failed to do much to improve inter-Korean relations during the administration of Park Geun-hye (2013-16), which focused on sanctions and pressure. This was the background for Park Gwang-ok, spokesperson for the committee, remarking after the briefing that he “agreed with the need for the Unification Ministry to play a more proactive role so that South Korea can take the lead in creating peace on the Korean Peninsula and forging a new relationship with the North.”

The Unification Ministry reportedly briefed the advisory committee about plans it had prepared to implement Moon’s campaign pledges. “We will take the lead in creating a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. We will work to bring about a peace treaty along with North Korea’s denuclearization and the complete dismantlement of its nuclear program,” Moon said while announcing his “bold plan for peace and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” which outlined his diplomacy and security policy, on Apr. 23.

The key components of Moon’s plan for denuclearization and peace are as follows: focusing unification on improving Koreans’ standard of living, basing inter-Korean relations and establishing governance of inter-Korean based on cooperation between the public and private sectors, decentralization of local government; giving inter-Korean cooperation a legal basis to make North Korean policy more permanent; and forming a unified economic zone on the Korean Peninsula and a regional economic zone in Northeast Asia to secure a growth engine. These components were also the focus of the Unification Ministry’s briefing.

The Unification Ministry reportedly also worked on plans to implement the “Korean Peninsula new economy map” that Moon released around Liberation Day 2015. Moon’s new economy map contains the vision of North and South Korea creating an economic community so that they can form an economic zone that would link with China and Russia in the East Sea and West (Yellow) Sea regions. “Moon is also very interested in the new economy map,” Lee Su-hoon said during the briefing.

“The new government’s policy approach is to use inter-Korean relations as leverage to take the initiative in providing a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue. Its first order of business is to repair our severed relations with the North,” said an expert on inter-Korean relations who was part of Moon’s presidential campaign.

The first step in this direction was the Unification Ministry’s approval of an advance request for contact with North Koreans that was filed by the Korean Sharing Movement, a group that provides humanitarian aid to North Korea and that seeks to work with North Korea to combat malaria, at the request of three local governments (Gyeonggi Province, Gangwon Province and Incheon). “Every June, North and South Korea used to join forces to combat malaria and other forest pests and diseases around the DMZ, but these efforts were interrupted in 2011. We’re trying to start with projects that are in the interest of both North and South Korea,” said Kang Yeong-sik, the secretary-general of Korean Sharing Movement.

In 2007, there were 1,616 cases of malaria along the border between North and South Korea, but inter-Korean collaboration on disease prevention brought the number of cases down to 339 in 2013. Since collaboration was suspended, malaria cases have once again been on the rise, from 458 in 2014 to 545 in 2015 and 492 last year.

By Jung In-hwan, staff reporter, and Park Kyung-man, north Gyeonggi correspondent

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