Rival party leaders offer to engage with NK’s new leadership

Leaders of the ruling and main opposition parties on Tuesday offered to engage with North Korea's new leadership, although in different ways and to varying extents.

Park Geun-hye, leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, and Han Myeong-sook, chief of the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP), told a forum in Seoul their respective parties will work to improve inter-Korean ties amid persisting tensions over the North's two deadly attacks on the South in 2010.

"The Saenuri Party and I are willing to support efforts for change in North Korea and work together (with the North), in order to swiftly improve South-North relations that have been marked by distrust since the (two attacks), and start on a path of sustainable peace and mutual growth," Park said at the forum marking Seoul's hosting of the Nuclear Security Summit next month.

She remained firm, however, about the attacks that killed a total of 50 South Koreans.

"A military provocation cannot be tolerated under any circumstances," Park said, referring to the March 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship and the November 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.

In her speech, DUP leader Han called for dialogue with the North's new leadership, saying inter-Korean cooperation should be expanded and deepened to lead the communist nation to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

"The Lee Myung-bak administration, which has stood by waiting for North Korea to change, has failed in its policy (toward Pyongyang)," Han said, criticizing the current government's hardline stance toward the North. "The DUP will push for normalization of inter-Korean relations and press for the lifting of the May 24 sanctions on North Korea, which have hampered our cross-border ties."

Seoul slapped economic sanctions on Pyongyang shortly after the ship sinking in 2010, further restricting any exchanges between the sides since then.

The Koreas remain in a technical state of war, after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The two political leaders' remarks came as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un seeks to consolidate the power he inherited from his father Kim Jong-il following the former leader's death in December. The comments also serve to highlight differences between the parties ahead of South Korea's general elections in April.(Yonhap)

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