South Korea calls for ‘new era of peace’ with North’s regime

SOUTH Korea’s president urged rival North Korea yesterday to use the transition of leadership after Kim Jong Il’s death to usher in a new era of peace on the tense Korean peninsula, even as he warned the North against any provocations.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak reached out in his New Year’s message to the North Korean government now led by Kim’s son, Kim Jong Un, saying he has high hopes for a breakthrough this year in negotiations over the North’s nuclear programme.

However, Lee warned that Seoul would respond sternly to any North Korean provocations. Relations between the rival Koreas dropped to their lowest point in decades following the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors and North Korea’s deadly shelling of a front-line island later that year.

Lee’s comments in a nationally televised speech came a day after the North called on its citizens to rally around Kim Jong Un and transform themselves into his “human shields.”

Lee said Kim Jong Il’s death is “portending a sea change” for the fractured Korean peninsula. “If North Korea comes forward with a sincere attitude it will be possible for us to work together to open a new era,” he said.

The Korean peninsula remains in a technical state of conflict because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North and South remain divided by a heavily fortified border, and their navies have traded fire over the years.

After a decade of warming ties, relations plummeted in 2008 after Lee took office with a firm policy of linking aid to the impoverished North to its commitment to dismantle its nuclear programme.

Lee said the Korean peninsula is at a turning point with Kim’s death, and “new opportunities always emerge amid such changes.”

His speech shows South Korea “has no intention” of provoking North Korea, said Cheon Seong-whun, an analyst with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

Yesterday, state media accused Lee of plotting to shake up the North by temporarily placing his troops on high alert after Kim Jong Il’s death. The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an editorial that Lee must “kneel down and apologise” for his acts.