In a shift that could pave the way for new talks on the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the government in the South has quietly abandoned its demand that the North apologize for the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, no longer making that a condition for the nuclear talks or other future exchanges.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in an interview at the Blue House, the presidential residence, said he would instead be looking for “sincerity in North Korea’s behavior” before returning to the six-party talks on disarmament.
When pressed about an apology as a condition, he twice declined to say it was still a requirement.
“We lost valued lives and that’s why the issue is so sensitive to us,” said Lee, who came into office in early 2008 on a pro-business and free-trade platform that also called for a new, hard-line approach to North Korea.
Lee’s conservative administration had been adamant about an apology for the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean sailors in March. The six-party talks, future government aid and a variety of inter-Korean exchanges were made contingent on a formal apology and North Korea’s punishment of those involved in the sinking.
An investigation backed by South Korea attributed the sinking to a North Korean torpedo attack. The North has denied any involvement and called the South’s inquiry “sheer fabrication.”
In July, the UN Security Council condemned what it called “the attack” on the Cheonan but stopped short of blaming North Korea.
A senior official in Lee’s government, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the nuclear issue, affirmed that the South was still angry about the sinking but that negotiations could resume without an apology.
A top aide in the president’s office also privately confirmed the policy change, saying an apology was “not a precondition to resuming the talks.”
The interview with Lee on Saturday came as South Korea prepared to host a G20 economic summit meeting tomorrow and on Friday, a first for an Asian nation. Lee is positioning himself and his country’s resilient economy as new leaders on the global stage.
The North Korean nuclear issue is already on the agenda of various bilateral meetings planned during the G20 gathering, the president said. The foreign ministers of China, Japan, Russia and the US discussed the resumption of the six-party talks on the sidelines of a recent Asian regional summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. The talks collapsed in April last year when North Korea withdrew from the negotiations.
Most political analysts in the South believe a North Korean apology for the Cheonan sinking is highly unlikely, but Lee said it was “possible.”
Lee suggested in the interview that an apology would be a wise “strategic decision” by the North, a move that could result in shipments of food and other humanitarian assistance from South Korea.
His government has consistently refused to send large-scale aid shipments to the North, although small deliveries of rice and flour were recently permitted after droughts and flooding in the impoverished North over the summer.
If talks were to resume, Lee emphasized, he would want to avoid the usual pattern of diplomacy that has dogged the nuclear issue: concessions by the North that lead to aid deliveries and new negotiations, which are then followed by new provocations by the North and the collapse of the talks.
“What we need now is to ensure that the six-party talks will bring about substantive results, rather than just talks for the sake of talks,” Lee said, echoing language that has lately been used by senior US diplomats.
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