South Korea's minister in charge of reconciliation with the North said yesterday that security on the divided peninsula would not improve until the issue of poverty in North Korea was addressed.
Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung also said that the South should take responsibility for addressing the problem, hinting at the possibility that Seoul could resume a suspension of its aid to the North.
Lee said in a New Year's message delivered to ministry officials: "As long as the North's poverty problem is not fundamentally addressed, security on the Korean peninsula will always be precarious and peace will not be guaranteed."
Lee also said that the North should understand that resolving its poverty problem through cooperation with the South, not through pursuing nuclear weapons, would ensure the country's security.
North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has relied on foreign assistance to feed its population of 23 million since a combination of natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s.
Nonetheless, Pyongyang persistently sought nuclear weapons programs and carried out its first atomic test on Oct. 9.
South Korea, which has aggressively pursued detente with the North since the first and only summit of their leaders in 2000, has been a main aid provider for the North.
The South suspended assistance, however, after the North test-fired a series of missiles in July.
The aid suspension has angered the North, bringing high-level inter-Korean dialogue to a deadlock. Relations worsened further following the North's nuclear test.
The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War ended in a truce and not in a peace treaty.
The reconciliation process on the peninsula has often been affected by political tensions over North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and missile programs.
After a yearlong boycott against negotiations, North Korea resumed talks about its nuclear program with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US in Beijing last month, but no progress was made.
Earlier yesterday, the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper accused the US of seeking to invade the country behind the scene of dialogue.
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