ed Resumption of dialogue

Koreas should pursue gradual, peaceful changes

Barring unexpected problems, hundreds of people from South and North Korea will likely meet their long-separated family members next month. If the North links the family reunion to the cancellation of joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States or the resumption of South Koreans’ tours of Mt. Geumgang, however, the humanitarian event will be canceled, as it was in September.

We hope Pyongyang knows better than that. Such a disappointing development is unlikely this time around, either, given the dire need for the Kim Jong-un regime to improve its economy and better the lives of its people.

The North Korean leadership should go further if it is to prove the authenticity of its repeated dialogue offers. South Korea has every reason to distrust the North’s "peace offensive,” which has often been followed by military provocations in the past.

To dispel lingering doubts in Seoul, Pyongyang will need to be bolder than ever. For example, it could agree to the South’s proposal to hold family reunion events more regularly, unaffected by changes in the political and military landscape. If the North stops using the humanitarian issue for political purposes, it will demonstrate the regime’s genuineness and maturity.

If Pyongyang really wants an end to the annual war games of South Korea and the U.S., it can lead by example by suspending all military drills of its own. The North’s young leader, for instance, recently inspected the training site of a special military unit aimed at infiltrating the South, deepening suspicions here about Pyongyang’s two-faced strategy. North Korea may assert that both dialogue and war-preparedness are necessary, but there can be no excuses for offense training.

North Korea’s top envoy to the U.N., Ambassador Sin Sun-ho, reiterated Friday Pyongyang’s calls for Seoul and Washington to come back to the multilateral dialogue table to discuss the North’s denuclearization, leaving the decision and the timing of such talks to ``those who oppose it.” In a coordinated move, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi echoed Sin, saying it is important to ``create positive conditions” on the Korean Peninsula. Yet Pyongyang must know unless it shows sincerity by taking a few preliminary steps, Seoul and Washington will not budge.

North Korea has become like a boy crying wolf too many times. Only deeds, not words, can change foreigners’ views of it.

Pyongyang’s counterparts also need to do their part to bring about such changes with some incentives, instead of waiting indefinitely for the North to change. At the very least, they should not make the already isolated regime cut itself off even more from the international community.

It is regrettable in this regard that the Park Geun-hye administration has been less than flexible in bringing the reclusive North out into the open. President Park herself has recently stressed the huge benefits she believes unification will bring not just to the two Koreas but surrounding countries as well. She can’t be more right about it in theory, but any unification of this divided peninsula should be through the formation of a community of all Koreans, itself the result of varied and continuous exchanges, not the sudden collapse of one or the other.

Unfortunately, President Park is giving the impression that she has the latter scenario in mind.

If the South Korean leader talks about unification but does little to bring about cooperation, and calls for creating a peace zone in the Demilitarized Zone but does next to nothing to ease tension and promote peace, her North Korea policy is little different from her predecessor, who did nothing but wait for the North to crumble from within.

President Park said the best way to predict the future is to create it. That should apply to inter-Korean relations, too ― by causing gradual, peaceful changes, not abrupt, violent ones.