SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday accepted the resignation of an important person in North Korea, who had asked to stop after North Korea destroyed a liaison office while increasing pressure on Seoul amid a stalled nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration.
Kim Yeon-chul, who was appointed Moon as unification minister in April last year when talks between the Trump and Pyongyang governments began to fall apart, left the job without holding a meeting with North Korea. He said he wanted to resign to take responsibility for the tension between rivals.
North Korea in recent months has completely severed all cooperation with South Korea while expressing frustration at Seoul’s reluctance to break away from Washington’s allies and restart inter-Korean economic projects held by US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program .
Kim offered to resign after North Korea in a demonstration made for TV Tuesday using explosives to destroy buildings in the border city of Kaesong. North Korea also said it would cut off all government and military communication channels and abandon the main military agreement reached in 2018 to reduce conventional threats, which experts say increases the risk of small skirmishes in border areas on land and sea.
It was not immediately clear who Moon considered as Kim’s successor. There are calls that Moon must overhaul his foreign policy and national security personnel amid worsening relations with North Korea and Seoul’s fading role as a mediator in nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang, which have been shaken by disagreements in the exchange of sanctions and disarmament measures.
The Moon government has been credited for coordinating diplomatic efforts to defuse the nuclear standoff with North Korea, with its envoys going back and forth between Pyongyang and Washington to help arrange the first meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018.
But there is criticism that South Korean officials are overly optimistic about the signs they see from Pyongyang and experiencing credibility problems so clearly that Kim has no intention of voluntarily handling nuclear which he might see as a strong guarantee for survival.
While taking provocative steps to South Korea this month, North Korea has also unleashed cruelty to activist-defector who for years flew anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border condemning Kim’s nuclear ambitions and human rights record.
North Korea, which is sensitive to criticism of its leadership, has mobilized massive demonstrations in recent weeks condemning defectors who have been described by the state media as “human waste.” It has also announced plans to support North Korean civilians from flying anti-South Korean propaganda leaflets in areas near land and sea borders, which experts say could potentially create security problems for South Korea.
Desperate to prevent tensions out of control, South Korea has promised to stop activists and threaten to press charges against two North Korean-born brothers who for years have led campaigns to drop leaflets on the border and float bottles of rice into North Korea. By sea.
But both Park Sang-hak and Park Jong-oh have promised to continue their campaign despite warnings and accuse Seoul of giving up on the North Korean threat.
“The (South Korean) government will coordinate closely with the police and local authorities to strengthen response and security at the site,” to prevent the border campaign, Unification Ministry spokesman Cho Hye-sil said on Friday.
Although Seoul sometimes sends police officers to block activists from silence during sensitive times, Seoul has previously rejected North Korea’s call to completely ban them, saying that they use free speech.
Experts say North Korea can use the activities of defectors as an excuse to increase pressure to the South because they seek to build internal unity and divert public attention from the bleak diplomatic and economic failures that may worsen under the COVID-19 pandemic.
