Seoul: North Korea accused capitalist South
Korea on Monday of plotting to destroy its socialist system and
said the policy was pushing relations to the brink of war.
According to a statement on Pyongyang`s official news
agency, relations have become so confrontational they are on
"the brink of war" because of the Seoul government`s policy of
"unification through absorption".
The statement, from a spokesman for the foreign
ministry`s Disarmament and Peace Institute, said Seoul`s
conservative rulers had reneged on previous agreements in
principle to reunify under a federal system.
The current strategy aimed to disable the North`s nuclear
deterrent, "force it into opening and destroy it in the end,"
the spokesman said.
It was prompted by the Seoul government`s "sinister
intention" to see its neighbour`s system collapse.
The statement, using language often employed by
Pyongyang, said Seoul`s efforts to win international support
for unification through absorption are "a declaration of a
war" against the North.
The South`s conservative President Lee Myung-Bak has
stressed the need to prepare for reunification of the
peninsula, which has been formally divided since 1948. He has
proposed a tax in the South to prepare for such an event.
In June, Lee said unification "won`t take such a long
time" but did not elaborate.
Ties have been frosty since Lee took over in 2008 from a
left-leaning administration that practised a "sunshine" policy
of aid and engagement.
They turned icy when Seoul accused Pyongyang last year of
causing two deadly border incidents.
Bureau Report
