Moon Jae-in calls for N. Korea to respond to peace initiative

By Yi Whan-woo

President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday he hopes to hear from North Korea on his peace initiatives introduced in Berlin last week, adding that it appears to be “the only road” left for the internationally-isolated Pyongyang.

Moon laid out a five-point plan aimed at reconciliation with the North in the initiatives during his invitational speech at the Korber Foundation in Berlin before joining the G20 summit in Hamburg from July 7 to 8.

The plan included signing a peace treaty with North Korea to replace the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement and guaranteeing the security of the Kim regime in return for its denuclearization.

The reconciliatory gesture came despite the Kim Jong-un regime’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), July 4.

“It was meaningful for the government to reveal the peace initiatives for the Korean Peninsula during our visit to Berlin. We appear to be far from it but it is where we should be headed for inter-Korean relations.” Moon said during a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae. “It also appears to be the only road left for North Korea. I look forward to hearing North Korea’s response.”

The President positively assessed the first joint talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the summit.

The three leaders promised to bolster joint measures against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Moon, however, admitted that the denuclearization of the North still faces a bumpy road ahead. He also assessed that South Korea is not capable of resolving the security crisis on the peninsula on its own, although he repeatedly has been pointing to the country’s leading role on inter-Korean issues.

“We must seriously recognize that the road to settle the North Korea nuclear issue has not yet opened, and that international agreement on sanctions against Pyongyang’s ICBM test will not be easy,” he said. “What we must recognize is that issues on the peninsula matter to us desperately, but in reality, we do not have the strength to resolve them nor the strength to draw out a relevant agreement.”

The President called for strengthening South Korea’s diplomatic capability by putting priority on its national interests, citing his experiences at the G20 summit.

He claimed that member-countries of the G20 failed to reach an agreement over free trade and climate change, two of the matters discussed at the G20 summit, because each of them put priority on their national interest.

“I seriously need to diversify our diplomacy and strengthen our diplomatic capability to secure our national interests,” he said.

Missile tech still ‘imperfect’

Meanwhile, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) assessed that North Korea has not mastered the technology to send an ICBM to space and have it re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, according to a lawmaker, Tuesday.

Citing the NIS following a briefing before the National Assembly Intelligence Committee, Rep. Yi Wang-young of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party said it has not been confirmed whether North Korea’s ICBM successfully re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Yi is a committee member.

He said Pyongyang bragged as if it had secured the technology for a nuclear-tipped ICBM, pointing out that the re-entry technology must be mastered in advance before securing precision-strike capability using a nuclear warhead.

“The ICBM test appears to be to protest the recent Seoul-Washington summit, to spread pessimism toward international sanctions on North Korea and propagandize Kim Jong-un as a strong leader,” Yi said.