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Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho speaks to the press at the Ministry of Unification Office of the Inter-Korean Dialogue on May 20, 2024, to mark the two-year mark of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. (Lee Je-hun/The Hankyoreh)

South Korean Minister of Unification Kim Yung-ho said Monday that “trusting completely” in North Korea’s intent to denuclearize rather than develop its nuclear capabilities could result in a “miscalculation” that could have a “severely negative security outcome” for South Korea.

His remarks came in response to Moon Jae-in’s recently published memoirs, in which the former president emphasized that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had “intent to denuclearize.”

The unification minister’s comments were in reply to a question about Moon’s memoirs during a 55-minute talk with reporters Monday morning at the Inter-Korean Relations Management Bureau in Seoul’s Jongno District to mark the second anniversary of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration taking office.

Moon’s memoir, entitled “From the Frontier to the Center,” included a passage stating that Kim Jong-un “repeatedly said that he had no intention of using nuclear capabilities.”

Despite not receiving any follow-up questions from the journalists present, Kim Yung-ho went on to say, “Two families defected by fishing boats to the East and West Sea coasts last year, and one of the members said they ‘would not have made the decision to defect if the Moon Jae-in administration had still been in office in South Korea.’”

“It has become abundantly clear just what the Moon Jae-in administration’s North Korea policies have meant to North Koreans,” he continued. His remarks seemed to suggest that the Moon administration’s policies ran counter to North Korean human rights by deliberately sharing the confidential statement of a defector with the press.

Commenting on this, a former senior administration official said, “It’s been nearly 10 months since Kim [Yung-ho] became a Cabinet minister, and he still seems to think he is back in his days as a professor sharing far-right videos on YouTube.”

“Rather than denouncing the previous administration, he should behave more like a Minister of Unification and focus his energies on restoring inter-Korean relations,” the former official urged.

Kim also said that North Korea’s United Front Department was “playing a central role in psychological warfare under the new name of the ‘Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee’s 10th Bureau.’”

The question of the department’s fate became a focus of attention in the wake of remarks by Kim Jong-un late last year, when he declared inter-Korean relations to be “the relations between two states hostile to each other” and ordered the formulation of measures for the reorganization of agencies involving in South Korea-related activities, including the United Front Department.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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