[Editorial] Pyongyang Suspends Reunions

Pyongyang declared yesterday that it would suspend the reunion of the separated families. The North notified of the suspension and the construction of an interview house in Mt. Geumgang, which are humanitarian issues, as the South refused to provide humanitarian aid such as rice and fertilizer to the North at a ministerial meeting in Busan last week. This reminds me of Pyongyang’s unreasonable demands during the Cold War period. I wonder whether siding with the North is worth becoming estranged from our allies and alienated from the international community.

Who made us not give them rice and fertilizer? It is the North that went ahead with the missile launches despite the international community’s efforts to stop them and the North who has destabilized stability in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia. Nonetheless, it came to the ministerial meeting and cried out that its military-first policy is protecting the South. Even after giving us an insult that was hard for a sovereign nation to endure, it is blaming us for the suspension of the separated families. What are we to the North? Do they think we are alright even with rude remarks and behaviors?

You can say that the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s reckless protection of the North and absent strategies asked for it. The ministerial meeting should have been postponed in the middle of the missile launches. It is wrong for the government to carry out the meeting, saying that it needed to keep the framework of dialogue, even in a situation in which anybody could have guessed that Pyongyang would use the meeting as a propaganda venue. When the tension was high, delaying would have been the best option. In the end, the North got what it wanted – propaganda — and the South lost what it wanted to keep – the framework of dialogue. In addition, government officials including President Roh behaved like they condoned the North. Such behavior broke cooperation among the South, the U.S., and Japan, and put us at the brink of becoming alienated from the international world. There has been no government that had ever dealt with the North so unskillfully and foolishly like this one.

The government should take a resolute stand before it is too late. The North will bring up second and third countermeasures. The suspension of Mt. Geumgang tour will be one of them. We should not be swayed by this. We should keep in mind that, otherwise, we will make the North a more spoiled child and face ourselves in a difficult situation while the international community asks for pressure on the North.