These early statements by South Korean president elect Lee Myung-bak are encouraging, but I would have to see real action before I believe them:
South Korea’s President-elect Lee Myung-bak said Thursday that he would not hesitate to criticize North Korea’s authoritarian government, one day after he won a landslide victory pledging to get tough with Pyongyang. [...]
“I assure you that there will be a change from the past government’s practice of avoiding criticism of North Korea and unilaterally flattering it,” Lee said at his first news conference as president-elect. “The North’s human rights issue is something we cannot avoid in this regard, and North Korea should know it.” [Choe Sang-hun - NY Times]
Lee will be a vast improvement in North Korean human rights issues compared to the outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun, but remember he is the same guy advocating to build a North Korean slave labor island.
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12:39 pm on December 22nd, 2007 1
This is good news for South Korea, but it’s also good news for North Korea. It’s time they had a good dose of reality. Roh has propped up KJI long enough. It’s time for tough love.
3:29 am on December 23rd, 2007 2
[...] will bring. Personally, however, I’m most interested in what KCNA thinks about Lee and his latest statements promising more scrutiny of North Korea on human rights. Unfortunately, KCNA is now on its fifth [...]
7:43 am on December 23rd, 2007 3
It will just be rhetoric. I guess if Lee were really pressured by the US to cut back significantly on the aid to North Korea he might do it if the US gave him something to offset the risk he would believe a North Korea collapse would bring…….
…but since the United States has flipflopped into following the Sunshine Policy, we won’t see that happen.
If Lee does spend time talking in public about North Korea Human Rights, my bet is that all it will do is expose even greater amounts of hypocrisy, because I don’t believe he will cut funding of the North Korean regime, because both liberals and conservatives in South Korea see it as something they must do: avoid collapse at all costs.
2:58 pm on December 23rd, 2007 4
The issue isn’t aid vs. no aid. It’s conditional vs. unconditional aid.
5:52 am on March 5th, 2008 5
[...] Myung-bak in a short time has already spoken out much more vocally about promoting human rights in North Korea then Roh ever did, but what Lee says and what he [...]
5:40 am on July 8th, 2008 6
[...] The part where Roh’s and Lee’s North Korea policies differ is that Lee expects North Korea to give something in return for aid given to include improving human rights conditions. Now that would be real reconciliation [...]