By Kang Seung-woo
President Park Geun-hye instructed her government Monday to prepare a roadmap for Korean unification that she hopes will bring an “economic bonanza” to neighboring countries as well as the two Koreas.
Park presided over a meeting of the Presidential Committee of Unification Preparation at Cheong Wa Dae ― the first of the year.
The organization was established in July in line with Park’s “unification bonanza” initiative in her 2014 New Year address.
“We need to seek ways to attract foreign public and private capital to a reunited Korea and convince people such investments will become seed money for the international economy to take off,” Park said at the meeting.
“If we prudently devise plans to build infrastructure and develop resources in North Korea after the Korean reunification, we will be able to lure investment in and out of the peninsula and it will help ease concerns over the cost of unification.”
She also stressed vigorous inter-Korean exchanges at a non-governmental level, saying the long period of division had led to a big difference in lifestyle and perception between the people of South and North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Park made it clear in their New Year addresses this year that they are open to an inter-Korean summit, raising the conciliatory mood on the peninsula.
Since then, however, the North has called for the South to stop planned joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington, and control the distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets by North Korean defectors.
The North calls the joint drills a rehearsal for invasion, while claiming that the propaganda leaflets slander its dignity.
“We have continuously urged the North to come to the negotiation table for dialogue without preconditions, but it has yet to do so, repeating its requirements,” Park said.
Park suggested that the North Korean dictator should abandon the North’s nuclear weapons program, citing the remarks of former Mongolian President Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat.
Ochirbat, Mongolia’s leader from 1990 to 1997, once said that national security comes from a fat wallet, not nuclear programs. He also said North Korea should choose reform and openness if it wanted to feed its people, according to Park.
“North Korea should quickly take the path to reform and dialogue by recognizing the wave of change, not ignoring it,” Park said. She added that Mongolia, Vietnam and Myanmar were on track for development and growth after opting for reform and openness.