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South Korean President Moon Jae-in makes an address celebrating the 20th anniversary of the June 15 Inter-Korean Joint Declaration at the Blue House on June 15. (provided by the Blue House)

“South and North Korea need to move forward, one step at a time, down the road to national reconciliation, peace, and reunification with optimism and conviction, like a river that eventually flows, in its winding course, to the sea.”

The 20th anniversary of the June 15 Inter-Korean Joint Declaration came amid a barrage of verbal attacks from North Korea. Throughout the entire day, the South Korean government and the ruling Democratic Party kept trying to stop the situation from deteriorating further and to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table.

In a meeting of senior secretaries and advisors at the Blue House on the morning of June 15 and in a video message sent to the ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the joint declaration held at Odusan Unification Observatory near Panmunjom that afternoon, South Korean President Moon Jae-in underlined what he sees as South and North Korea’s inevitable destiny — namely, moving toward peace and reunification.

“I also deeply regret the fact that progress in North Korea-US relations and inter-Korean relations hasn’t met expectations. We’ll constantly work to implement the Apr. 27 Panmunjom Joint Declaration and the Sept. 19 Pyongyang Joint Declaration. We ask that you don’t close the door to dialogue,” Moon said, in an apparent reference to a statement by Kim Yo-jong, deputy director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), in which she expressed deep disappointment about South Korea.

“The Korean Peninsula hasn’t yet reached a place where South and North Korea’s will alone can enable us to run forward as freely as we would like,” Moon noted, while underlining that “there are definitely projects that South and North Korea can work on independently.”

Three of the figures who have orchestrated the government’s policy toward North Korea — Moon Chung-in, special presidential advisor for unification, foreign affairs, and national security; Jeong Se-hyun, former unification minister and senior vice chairman for the National Unification Advisory Council; and Lee Jong-seok, former unification minister and senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute — agreed that urgent action by the government is needed to prevent the worst from happening. These figures stressed that the government should move as quickly as possible to enact a ban on sending balloons filled with propaganda leaflets into North Korea, noting that those balloon launches were the immediate cause of the recent crisis.

Other experts spoke of the need to organize an inter-Korean summit with a one-point agenda. Kim Tae-nyeon, floor leader for the Democratic Party, promised to push for the National Assembly’s ratification of the Apr. 27 Panmunjom Declaration, which was signed by Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The reason that the government and ruling party are striving so hard to resolve the situation is because of serious concerns that, if North Korea carries out an armed provocation as Kim Yo-jong has publicly threatened, everything that South and North Korea have worked so hard to achieve since 2018 could go up in smoke. If a clash between the two sides leads to casualties, inter-Korean relations could regress to the tense standoff that was in place until 2017.

The South Korean army reported that it has been closely following the movements of North Korean forces but hasn’t detected anything unusual.

The main point of the declaration whose 20th anniversary was celebrated on June 15 was a pledge of coexistence. Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul attended an unveiling ceremony for a memorial stone engraved with a poem by pastor and democracy activist Moon Ik-hwan. The ceremony was held at Dorasan Station on the Gyeongui Line.

“The storms may rage, but we will stay the course. The June 15 spirit is independence rather than subservience, peace rather than confrontation, and reunification rather than division,” Kim said.

The North Korean authorities neither held an official ceremony on the 20th anniversary of the joint declaration nor issued an official statement. With the ball in Seoul’s court, Pyongyang appears to be preparing the next phase of action while weighing what it stands to gain and lose.

By Gil Yun-hyung and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporters, and Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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