Pres. Lee: Only regime change will get NK to give up nukes

President Lee Myung-bak on Friday said North Korea will never give up its nuclear program through negotiations or dialogue but only in the event of a change or collapse of its communist regime.

In a breakfast meeting at the presidential office with a group of foreign policy and security advisers, including former senior officials and scholars, he said, “The Stalinist system of the (former) Soviet Union lasted for about 30 years but North Korean regime has been maintained for the sixth year already.”

President Lee also proposed a reunification strategy be prepared for a sudden change in the North, including a power change, as a way to defuse the nuclear crisis.

“The (South Korean) government expects to change the North Korean people, if not the regime,” he said. “South Korea will cooperate with the U.S. and Japan and persuade China to make North Korea give up its nuclear program, but the North Korean people can change faster than this .”

The president added that the government should “draw up a very comprehensive (North Korea) strategy,” as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is so obsessed with tightening control over his people.

ddr@donga.com