South Korea’s unification ministry said on Wednesday that severed communication links with North Korea should reopen, as President Moon Jae-in seeks a policy of sanctions and dialogue with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.
“Our most basic stance is that communication lines between South and North Korea should open,” Lee Duk-haeng, a ministry spokesman told a regular media briefing.
Moon was elected to office on May 9 and reportedly plans to send diplomats to the United States, China, Japan and Russia this month to discuss approaches to North Korea.
Communication links were cut by Pyongyang after February 2016, Lee said, when sanctions were imposed on North Korea after its last nuclear test and its decision to shut down a joint industrial zone in the North.
Lee said authorities from the South go to the Panmunjom communications office at the border between the two Koreas every day to check for possible responses from North Korea.
North Korea seemingly rebuffed Moon’s offer to talk by test-firing a missile on Sunday in violation of UN sanctions, saying the launch was a “newly developed ballistic rocket” capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
North Korea has rejected all calls to end its nuclear and missile programs, even from its major ally China, calling them legitimate means of self-defence.
In New York, The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, took a tougher line, saying nations either “support North Korea or you support us,” in a warning to countries failing to implement UN sanctions.
Washington, she said, would consider talks with Pyongyang only if the country halted all nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
Her comments came ahead of an emergency Tuesday meeting of the UN Security Council, which on Monday unanimously condemned North Korea’s latest missile test and warned of new sanctions.
“If you are a country that is supplying or supporting North Korea, we will call you out on it,” Haley told reporters, flanked by Japan and South Korean ambassadors to the UN. “We will make sure that everyone knows who you are and we will target those sanctions towards you as well.”
If South Korea truly wants to defuse tension in the Korean Peninsula, South Korea must start talks with the USA for the removal of all American soldiers and military equipment from the Korean Peninsula. Once all the American soldiers are removed from the Korean Peninsula, the reunification of Korea will go very quickly and smoothly.
Do south koreans actually believe that by impeaching one president and electing another, they have achieved sovereignty and self determination?
The situation on the Peninsula is confusing at best. I do agree with Michael Chan’s post, the US has to withdraw and then some kind of peace talks could start when the US leaves. As long as the US military is in South Korea and even Japan there will always be a cloud over the whole region.
I get a sense that a lot of people in China don’t understand what would happen if the US were to leave the region. You’d get a remilitarized, nuclear armed, Japan, a nuclear armed South Korea, and maybe even a nuclear armed Taiwan and Phillipines. These countries would not simply go back to being Chinese vassal states.
China is the oldest civilisation that dates back to more than 5,000 years. Over this long period of time, China has experienced all kinds of situations, years of splendour during the Han, Tang and Ming dynasties, and years of misery when the Mongols and the Manchus invaded the country and ruled it for centuries. I am sure that China can deal with a divided Korea, one part being occupied by American troops, as it can deal with nuclear armed neighbours.
Michael Chan
My point is that, for now, China is actually better off maintaing the status quo, having the US in control of its neighbors’ militaries–espeicially Japan. Therefore China shouldn’t be so eager to throw the US out of the region.
Nuclear weapons are game changers that fundamentally change the concept of war. Although China has 5,000 years of experiance of dealing with Japan as a neighbor, it has ZERO experiance of dealing with Japan as a nuclear armed neighbor.