North Korea, which has been raising the tenor of its overall criticism of South Korean President Park Geun Hye for some time, has come out against the “2nd Plan for the Development of North-South Relations,” the Ministry of Unification blueprint for inter-Korean relations.
Explaining the plan in a piece published by Rodong Sinmun on the 16th, the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland asserted, “The South Korean puppet Ministry of Unification recently submitted the ‘2nd Plan for the Development of North-South Relations’ to the ‘National Assembly.’ They say the plan is the ‘policy toward the north’ the present regime will pursue for five years to come.”
The description is accurate: the Ministry of Unification did recently submit its plan for the coming period of inter-Korean relations to the National Assembly.
However, the piece went on to angrily denounce the plan, saying that it makes “a mockery of the public both at home and abroad to talk about the development of inter-Korean relations [while] severing all ties between the North and the South and frantically seeking confrontation and war.”
Citing its grievances with the tone of the plan, the piece declared, “Deleted from the second plan are all matters related to implementing the October 4th Declaration [that emerged from the 2nd Inter-Korean Summit of 2007], and included in it are the ‘nuclear issue’ and ‘human rights issue;’ a total denial of the inter-Korean declarations and an unpardonable provocation to the DPRK.”
The piece went on to add that the plan is not aimed at improving relations between the two Koreas. Therefore, it proclaimed, “The puppet regime should totally nullify the above-said extremely disturbing plan and decisively roll back its policy of confrontation with compatriots.”
