South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday offered “audacious” economic assistance to North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons program, while avoiding harsh criticism of the North days after it threatened “deadly” retaliation over the COVID-19 outbreak it blames on the South.
In a speech celebrating the end of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula, Yoon also called for better ties with Japan, calling the two countries partners in navigating challenges to freedom and saying their shared values would help them overcome historical grievances linked to Japan’s brutal colonial rule before the end of World War II.
Yoon’s televised speech on the liberation holiday came days after North Korea claimed a widely disputed victory over COVID-19, but also blamed Seoul for the outbreak.
Photo: AP
The North insists that leaflets and other objects flown across the border by activists had spread the virus, an unscientific claim Seoul described as “ridiculous.”
Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, said that North Korea’s denuclearization would be key for peace in the region and the world.
If North Korea halts its nuclear weapons development and genuinely commits to a process of denuclearization, the South would respond with huge economic rewards that would be provided in phases, Yoon said.
Yoon’s proposal was not meaningfully different from previous South Korean offers that have already been rejected by the North, which has been accelerating its efforts to expand the nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sees as his best guarantee of survival.
“We will implement a large-scale program to provide food, providing assistance for establishing infrastructure for the production, transmission and distribution of electrical power, and carry out projects to modernize ports and airports to facilitate trade,” Yoon said.
“We will also help improve North Korea’s agricultural production, provide assistance to modernize its hospitals and medical infrastructure, and carry out initiatives to allow for international investment and financial support,” he said, adding that such programs would “significantly” improve North Korean lives.
Inter-Korean ties have deteriorated amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which derailed in early 2019 over disagreements in exchanging a release of crippling US-led sanctions against the North and the North’s disarmament steps.
North Korea ramped up its testing activity this year, launching more than 30 ballistic missiles so far, including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017.
Experts say Kim is intent on exploiting a favorable environment to push forward his weapons program, with the UN Security Council divided and effectively paralyzed over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
North Korea’s unusually fast pace in weapons demonstrations also underscores brinkmanship aimed at forcing Washington to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating badly needed economic benefits and security concessions from a position of strength, experts have said.
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