N. Korea urges South to resume Gaeseong, Geumgang projects

 人参与 | 时间：2024-09-22 00:53:19
A commentary of North Korea's state-run media Rodong Sinmun titled 'what hinders new journey of North-South relations' in its July 31 edition / Rodong Sinmun
A commentary of North Korea's state-run media Rodong Sinmun titled "what hinders new journey of North-South relations" in its July 31 edition / Rodong Sinmun

By Park Ji-won

A North Korean newspaper urged South Korea, Tuesday, to take substantive measures to revive the now-dormant Gaeseong Industrial Complex and tours to Mount Geumgang in North Korea.

The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Central Committee of North Korea's Workers' Party, released a commentary titled "What Hinders New Journey of North-South Relations," blaming the South's slow actions for a delay in resumption.

"Although the owner of the presidential office has changed, it is adding new sanction lists jumping on the foreign bandwagon, rather than coming up with measures to resolve the suspension of the operation of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and the tour program of Mount Geumgang, which former conservative governments left behind," the newspaper reported Tuesday.

"The South Korean government is having trouble speaking their own words and moving their own limbs to read the mood of this side and that side, as it is wearing glasses of prejudice of the May 24 sanctions and U.N. sanctions against North Korea."

The direct wording asking for the resumption of the operation of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and tour programs of Mount Geumgang was made for the first time through the North's media.

The North's request came several days after the South's government rejected a request by 153 people who have operated businesses in the Gaeseong complex to visit the North's border town. Also, Mark Lambert, the U.S. State Department's Korean desk director who visited Seoul for two days to meet with South Korean authorities and business officials of the Gaeseong complex and Hyundai Asan reportedly said that the U.S. is ready to support inter-Korean exchanges if Pyongyang shows willingness to denuclearize.

The newspaper added that "if the South Korean government is taking into account the expectations of the entire Korean people who want unification, peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula, it should take the truthful attitude and right position to implement the Panmunjeom Declaration."

Comparing the inter-Korean relations to a soap bubble, it said "if the soap bubble shrinks, there is no shape left."

Of the vice minister of the unification ministry Chun Hae-sung's visit to the North on Wednesday, unification ministry officials said "it is irrelevant to the resumption of the Mount Geumgang tours as we are in the phase of sanctions against North Korea. It is to work on the family reunions."

Meanwhile, Uriminzokkiri, the North's propaganda website, also criticized South Korea for maintaining sanctions on Pyongyang, saying sanctions and conversation cannot go along with each other.

The website said Seoul's recent move is absurd as it will closely cooperate with the international community to put sanctions in place against the North following a report of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) that the North's coal was found to have been shipped to the South.

"It is obvious that the sanctions against the North are the result of the policy of confrontation and it is of no help to the flow of developments on the Korean Peninsula along with the improvement of inter-Korean relations," it added.

The website criticized the South's double-standard attitude saying, "The South's action which is resolving problems through conversation in the front and sanctions against the North in the back, is the revival of the anti-unification based North Korean policy of the former conservative government."


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