One of the main North Korean propaganda websites targeting South Korea, “Uriminzokkiri” has attacked President Park Geun Hye’s suggestion of a world peace park along the DMZ, calling it an “unbearable insult for our people who are living with the pain and misfortune of national division.”
In a May 13th commentary carried by the website, which is run by the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, it noted that the DMZ “is a line of division between opposing armed forces set up by the July 27th, 1953 armistice agreement. Going on about the DMZ as a ‘peace park’ now, when the Chosun Peninsula is facing a crisis of war, is a complete outrage.”
Such a peace park, with its flower beds and incoming foreign tourists, would turn the tragedy of national division into a source of pride, the piece went on to claim, calling it a reckless and anti-Korean act by President Park.
“The ones doing harm to Korean Peninsula peace and security are the United States and South Korea,” it asserted. “This is a presumptuous sophistry from the destroyers of peace and provokers of war.”
The source of the North Korean anger was a May 8th comment made by Park during her speech to Congress in Washington, DC, during which she noted, “The Demilitarized Zone must live up to its name; a zone that strengthens the peace, not undermines it.
“It is with this vision in mind that I hope to work toward an international park inside the DMZ. It will be a park that sends a message of peace to all of humanity,” she declared.
