[News Focus] Ex-Moon aide slammed from both sides over remarks on leaving Koreas divided

Im Jong-seok, who served as chief of staff for former President Moon Jae-in, speaks during a commemorative event marking the sixth anniversary of the Pyongyang Declaration signed between Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sept. 19, 2018. (Yonhap)

Im Jong-seok, who was chief of staff for former President Moon Jae-in, sparked criticism across partisan lines after he argued South Korea should no longer pursue reunification with the North as a policy goal, and instead accept the status quo of two Koreas.

Tae Yong-ho, on the presidential advisory council of Korean reunification, told The Korea Herald on Monday that Im was “empowering Kim Jong-un and his two-state policy” with his suggestion.

“Arguing we should no longer strive to reunify Korea has the same effect as acknowledging North Korea as an independent and separate country,” said Tae, who worked at the North Korean embassy in London before seeking asylum in Seoul in 2016.

“If the concept of doing away with reunification becomes an accepted paradigm in South Korean politics, we will have no say in the human rights violations occurring north of the border,” he said.

Some of Im’s former colleagues in the Moon administration openly disagreed with his statement.

Speaking to The Korea Herald on Monday, Rep. Park Jie-won, who was Moon’s spy chief, said it was “not apt” for a political leader of South Korea to “deny the future of reunification in the Korean Peninsula.”

“I’m not saying we can’t have such discussions theoretically from an academic perspective. But it’s another thing for a high-ranking government official or a political leader such as himself to publicly champion the idea of two Koreas,” he said.

“I don’t think that is an idea that many South Koreans can accept.”

Im reiterated his stance in a statement posted on his Facebook on Monday, saying, “Let’s stop being idealistic and face the reality.” “What is so hard about moving past the phase of seeking reunification and existing as two states peacefully, respecting one another?” he wrote.

The former presidential chief of staff’s controversial remarks came at an event on Thursday marking the sixth anniversary of the 2018 Pyongyang Declaration that included a pact for minimizing military tensions in border areas, which was touted as a key Moon legacy on relations with North Korea.

The pact gradually fell apart over the months following North Korea’s launch of a military reconnaissance satellite in November last year, to which South Korea responded by resuming surveillance activities around the border. North Korea then withdrew from the pact, prompting the South to do the same.

Im said the article of the Constitution that considers all of the Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands to be South Korean territory needed to be “removed or amended” and the South’s Ministry of Unification, whose purpose as outlined by law is to prepare for reunification, should be “reorganized.”

Moon, who also spoke at the event, said North Korea “may refuse to accept complete denuclearization as a premise unlike the last time” and that South Korea and the US “may in turn need to rewrite their approach to denuclearization and peace completely.”

Calling for “a complete do-over of the existing discourse on peace and reunification,” the former president said the Korean Peninsula was “only a few wrong steps away from a military confrontation.”

“Sadly the Yoon administration has neither the will nor the capacity to fix things,” he said.

By Kim Arin(arin@heraldcorp.com)