By Lee Tae-hoon
The rival parties continued to lock horns over the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the inter-Korean maritime border in the West Sea drawn by U.N. forces.
The ruling Saenuri Party stepped up pressures on main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) presidential candidate Rep. Moon Jae-in to give up his candidacy to take responsibility for the late President Roh Moo-hyun’s alleged attempt to nullify the NLL.
Party Rep. Chung Moon-hun claimed that Roh verbally promised to nullify the NLL during one-on-one talks with late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at around 3 p.m. on Oct. 3, 2007.
The lawmaker alleged that Roh compromised the country's sovereignty and its dignity by verbally promising to revise the de-facto sea border.
However, Moon, who served as the chief of staff under the Roh administration, argued that no such meeting was held between the two leaders at the inter-Korean summit and Chung was making groundless accusations based on private talks that never took place.
“No private meeting was held between the two leaders,” the DUP presidential candidate said Monday in a meeting of party officials, denouncing the Saenuri Party’s push to have a Nationasl Assembly inspection on the matter as old fashioned mud-slinging tactics.
The then Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo and Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung were also at odds over the definition of the NLL and what stance Seoul should take on the issue.
In a speech at the National Assembly in Aug. 2007, Lee criticized the South Korean military’s steadfast defense of the NLL, arguing that Seoul’s inflexibility over the contentious area resulted in bloody clashes between the naval forces of the two Koreas in 1999 and 2002.
A day after his parliamentary speech, the Unification Ministry released a statement suggesting that it was wrong for hardliners to claim that any revision in the NLL would cause a serious security threat.
In contrast, Defense Minister Kim, who joined the Saenuri Party in 2008 on a conservative party proportional representative seat, openly criticized Lee’s stance, which was obviously endorsed by liberal-minded President Roh.
“I cannot accept such claims,” he said in 2007 over Lee’s proposal to take a more flexible approach on the NLL issue.
Kim, who now serves a chief advisor to Saenuri presidential contender Park Geun-hye, defined the NLL as a territorial borderline that the country must defend, whereas Lee maintained that it was subject to further inter-Korean dialogue.
The Saenuri Party, backed by Kim’s testimony, argues that the presidential office ordered the country's spy agency to conduct a review of the possible fallout if South Korea no longer enforced the NLL. The party argues that this reflects Roh’s willingness to make a compromise.