President Lee Myung-bak, who is in the U.S. to attend the G-20 Summit, said Friday that North Korea should demonstrate greater responsibility for lessening the nuclear threat on the Korean Peninsula and move to improve its human rights records, commensurate to its newfound status as a country that no longer sponsors terrorism.
In a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Washington before attending the Group of 20 financial summit, Lee said, "Following the removal from the U.S. terrorism list, North Korea is supposed to behave in a more responsible way," the government-controlled Yonhap reported Saturday, citing the presidential spokesman.
Lee's remarks came after North Korea Wednesday threatened to restrict and shutter all overland passage through the military demarcation line, refuse nuclear sampling, and shut the Red Cross liaison office and all direct telephone lines between the South and the North.
In response, Ban, an ex-South Korean foreign minister, said that the U.N. will make its maximum effort to force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program and improve its human rights record, according to the presidential spokesman.
The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration distanced itself from the previous two administrations that promoted engagement with North Korea, by sponsoring a recent U.N. resolution condemning North Korea's alleged human rights abuses for the first time.
At his meeting with Ban, Lee said his government would "continue to closely watch the human rights situation in the North."