Foreign Minister Urged to Quit Over ARF Omission

South Korea's opposition parties Saturday urged Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hwan to quit in connection with the omission of the tourist shooting death in the chairman's statement of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Singapore.

The main opposition Democratic Party termed the incident as an unprecedented diplomatic humiliation and called upon Minister Yoo to give a full account of the incident before stepping down.

A spokeswoman for the second largest Party for Free Advancement called the ARF gaffe as a disaster resulting from the lack of vision and strategies by the Lee Myung-bak administration.

Even South Korea's governing party expressed regret, noting that the fatal incident that took place at the Mt. Geumgang resort goes beyond cross-border relations with North Korea and should be approached as an international incident.

"In light of North Korea's unwillingness to cooperate on the investigation, deleting any mention of the tragedy is very regrettable," Yonhap News quoted Cha as saying.

The comment came after the ARF Friday decided to drop references to both last year's inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang and the death of Park Wang-ja from the final statement of the meeting, held in Singapore.

Park, a 53-year-old housewife, was shot dead on July 11 when she strolled into a restricted zone on a beach near North Korea's east coast resort.

Originally, the AFR's statement included a mention of last year's summit agreement on a set of reconciliatory projects, as well as concern over North Korea's unwillingness to cooperate fully to investigate the shooting death.

Although the GNP spokesman withheld criticism against South Korea's Foreign Ministry, opposition parties lashed out at the ministry, terming the failure to win international support for its views as a diplomatic gaffe.

"There is a feeling that Seoul gave too much to Pyongyang in the past and that the new administration is trying to correct this," an official of the opposition Democratic Party was quoted as saying.

The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration has demanded a more "balanced" approach to North Korea, saying any future help will depend on reciprocity and North Korea's willingness to give up its nuclear ambitions and move toward openness.