ED North's apology falls short

Pyongyang should put action before words

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered an apology to South Korea, Friday, for the killing of a South Korean fisheries official by the North's military. Such an apology is rare, considering the North's bad track record of never saying sorry for similar incidents.

The United Front Department, a Workers' Party organ in charge of inter-Korean relations, delivered Kim's message that he feels “very sorry” for greatly “disappointing” President Moon Jae-in and other South Koreans with the occurrence of the “unsavory” case in its waters. The notice was sent to Cheong Wa Dae, three days after North Korean soldiers brutally shot and killed the unarmed official, 47, who had drifted into the North's territorial waters off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula.

Ostensibly, Kim's two expressions of “sorry” in the notice is “exceptional” as Unification Minister Lee In-young put it. Pyongyang had never apologized for the death of a female South Korean tourist, Park Wang-ja, who was shot at the Mount Geumgang resort in 2008. But if one looks into the notice carefully, his apology sounds like a lame excuse for the North's brutal and barbaric act. The North's soldiers even incinerated the victim's remains, according to information gathered by the South's military and intelligence agency. The North said that it only burned the unidentified flotation device he had been holding.

The North was apparently trying to justify the killing by stating that its soldiers fired more than 10 gunshots under the related rules of engagement for maritime border security. The notice gave the impression that the shooting was inevitable because the official was trying to flee disobeying verbal security checks after the soldiers fired two blanks. Pyongyang also denied Seoul's announcement that the shooters set fire to his body. It also described the official as an “illegal intruder.”

What's more problematic is that the North warned the South to stop violating its western maritime border in searching for the remains of the victim. The warning came Sunday after the South's military and Coast Guard conducted a search operation on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border. It is hard to understand why the North issued such a warning which could reignite a sea border dispute without recognizing the established NLL. It should not try again to nullify the NLL and move the border further to the South.

The Kim regime should take follow-up measures if it wants to prove the sincerity of his apology. The North must conduct a probe again into the shooting case to lay bare the truth. It also needs to accept Seoul's demands for a joint investigation to clear any suspicions. Then it should punish those responsible for the killing and take action to prevent a recurrence. Otherwise, Kim's apology cannot prevent already-frayed inter-Korean ties from becoming further aggravated.

President Moon, for his part, should explain why he dealt with the incident belatedly. Moon kept mum on the killing for 33 hours after having received a report on the case. He did not attend a National Security Council meeting to discuss the matter. He must clear allegations that he delayed his response to give a prerecorded video speech to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to call for a declaration to terminate the Korean War which ended with an armistice in 1953. His quick action could have saved the life of our citizen.