MOBILE DEVICES
Free Headline Alerts     
Worldwide Web WorldTribune.com

  breaking... 


Tuesday, May 26, 2009      East-Asia-Intel.com

North Korean official reportedly executed for detente policies toward the South

SEOUL — North Korea's increasingly belligerent Kim Jong-Il regime executed a key official who had pushed for reconciliation with South Korea, according to reports here.   

South Korea's Vice Unification Minister Lee Kwan-se, left, shakes hands with Choe Sung-chol, vice chairman of North Korea's Asian Pacific Peace Committee in Kaeseong, North Korea, in 2007.   Korea Times
Choe Sung-Chol, who served as the high-profile point man on South Korea as vice chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, was executed last year for mishandling relations with Seoul before and after its new conservative government took office, the South's Yonhap News Agency reported on May 19.

Choe had pushed for bold reconciliation with Seoul's previous liberal governments, which had initiated the "sunshine" policy of peaceful engagement with the North, providing massive aid to the impoverished communist neighbor from 1998 to 2007.

Choe was ostensibly accused of corruption, but the regime’s real motivation for executing him was to punish the dovish official for the questionable value of the past decade's reconciliation with the South, according to the Yonhap report.


Also In This Edition

"Despite hard-liners' objections, Choe had strongly pushed for progress in relations with the South," a source was quoted as saying. "But inter-Korean relations deteriorated after the governmental change in the South, and he was blamed for the 'misjudgments' and all other fallout," the source said.

Pyongyang held Choe accountable for the North's dependence on the capitalist South, which had increased with a series of economic exchanges, Yonhap said. "Pyongyang punished Choe for planting fantasies about South Korea in North Korean society," it said.

The administration of President Lee Myong-Bak, the first conservative leader in a decade, has cut off all economic aid to the North in a move aimed at holding Pyongyang accountable for its nuclear weapons program. Choe disappeared from public view early last year after speculation that he had been dismissed.

According to Seoul's Good Friends, an NGO that has extensive sources within North Korea, Pyongyang also purged a number of other officials involved in inter-Korean relations, blaming them for pushing for reconciliation with the South.

After replacing doves with hawks in the government and party agencies, the North used them to rekindle ideological conflict with the South to damage Lee’s administration, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

The agencies have been told to offer support for North Korea sympathizers in the South, including leftist civic groups and politicians to achieve a regime change in the South's next presidential election in 2012, the year that the North's marks the 100th birthday of the late founding ruler, Kim Il-Sung.



About Us     l    Contact Us     l    Geostrategy-Direct.com     l    East-Asia-Intel.com
Copyright © 2009    East West Services, Inc.    All rights reserved.