New leader talking tough over Japan and North Korea
Source: Agencies |
December 21, 2012, Friday
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SOUTH Korea's president-elect, Park Geun-hye, used her first major speech yesterday to warn of the risks posed by a hostile North Korea and also fired a political shot across the bows of Japan's incoming prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Speaking after a visit to the country's national cemetery, which included a poignant homage at the graves of her assassinated father and mother, South Korea's first female leader pledged to spread wealth more evenly.
Park has said she will hold talks with North Korea and resume aid to the country, but only if it abandons its nuclear weapons program. North Korea launched a rocket last week that critics said was a test for technology that could be used for a long-range missile that could carry a nuclear warhead."North Korea's long-range missile launch showed how grave the security reality is that we are faced with," Park told reporters a day after her election victory.
Despite the launch, Park says humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and daily goods meant for infants, the sick and other vulnerable people, will flow. She says none of the aid will be anything North Korea's military could use.
She's open to conditional talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The aid won't be as much as North Korea will want, to be sure, and it won't be as much as her liberal challenger in Wednesday's election, Moon Jae-in, would have sent. Park's conditions on aid and talks could also doom talks before they begin.
Pursuing engagement with North Korea "really would have to be her top priority for her to be a game-changing kind of leader on the issue," John Delury, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, said. He added that Park is more likely to take a passive, moderate approach.
"In the inter-Korean context, there's not a big difference between a passive approach and a hostile approach," Delury said, "because if you don't take the initiative with North Korea, they'll take the initiative" in the form of provocations meant to raise their profile.
Park takes office in February and signaled she would continue outgoing Lee Myung-bak's tough line on territorial claims that Japan has on South Korea.
Sexual slavery
The relationship between them, the two closest allies of the United States in the region, has been damaged by an island row and the issue of an apology and compensation from Japan for the forced sexual slavery of Korean women in World War II.
South Korea says Japan, which has similar disputes with China, has not come to terms with its harsh past rule of Korea. Japan says it has paid compensation for the slavery issue and has apologized. "I will try to work for greater reconciliation, cooperation and peace in Northeast Asia based on correct perception of history," she said in an apparent reference to the simmering conflict with Tokyo.
Park, 60, replaces fellow conservative Lee after his mandatory single, five-year term ends. The slightly built and elegant Park grew up in Seoul's presidential palace during the 18-year rule of her father, Park Chung-hee, who took power in a military coup in 1961.
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