South Korea’s president offered yesterday to resume stalled reconciliation talks with North Korea, saying he is willing to carry out previous summit accords between the countries and provide the impoverished North with food aid.
The proposal, in a speech South Korean President Lee Myung-bak delivered to the new parliament, was a turnaround from his previous tougher policy toward the communist nation, which included a warning that he would review previous summit accords.
“Full dialogue between the two Koreas must resume,” Lee said in his prepared remarks.
“The South Korean government is willing to engage in serious consultations on how to implement” the summit deals and other previous agreements between the two sides, he said.
The conservative leader took office in February, saying he would scrutinize previous summit agreements to see if they were worth implementing.
North Korea had bristled at Lee’s stance, viewing it as an apparent slap in the face of its supreme leader Kim Jong Il, who signed the accords. The North has threatened to attack the South and lobbed personal insults at Lee almost daily, calling him a “traitor.”
Sweetening his dialogue offer, Lee also said he is “ready to cooperate in efforts to help relieve the food shortage in the North as well as alleviate the pain of the North Korean people.”
International aid agencies have warned that North Korea is facing its worst food shortages in years due to severe floods last year. The shortages were aggravated by the lack of assistance from South Korea amid stalled relations.
Lee also urged the North to resolve humanitarian issues such as resuming reunions of families separated between the Koreas, and also allowing hundreds of South Korean POWs and civilians believed to be held in the North to return home.
Lee’s softened stance toward North Korea comes amid concern that South Korea may be left with little say in international issues at a time when progress in nuclear negotiations is bringing the North closer to the US.
Lee’s parliamentary speech comes as his leadership has been battered by a wave of protests against his decision to resume imports of US beef.
After Lee’s speech, a tourism company said a North Korean soldier had fatally shot a South Korean visitor at a mountain resort in the North. The soldier opened fire after the woman crossed into a restricted area at a beach, Hyundai Asan said.
The incident happened at Mount Kumgang, a popular Seoul-funded resort on the east coast of North Korea, a unification ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
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