It is the job of the South Korean unification minister to improve relations with North Korea, aiming at an eventual Korean reunification. Still, it was nothing less than inappropriate for a new unification minister to put an emphasis on the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue at a time when Pyongyang was threatening to turn South Korea into a “nuclear sea of fire” and launch a “second Korean War.”

True, new Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae did mention the high level of tension that had been escalating between the two Koreas since North Korea recently launched a long-range missile and conducted its third nuclear test. In his inaugural speech last week, he also said South Korea could not tolerate North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and military provocations.

Still, he put a greater emphasis on the resumption of dialogue when he said, “Dialogue is needed to improve inter-Korean relations no matter how serious the (security) situation is now.” He said he would favorably consider humanitarian aid for the underprivileged, including malnourished newborns and children.

The unification minister referred to humanitarian aid undoubtedly as the first stage of President Park Geun-hye’s vaunted North Korea policy initiative, the “Korean peninsula process of trust building.” In the next two stages, her policy initiative envisions a low level of economic cooperation, as in agriculture and forestation, and large-scale South Korean investments in North Korea’s infrastructure such as transportation and communications.

But his call for dialogue was ill timed, with his inauguration coinciding with the start of a South Korean-U.S. military exercise, Key Resolve, which was set to continue from Monday last week to this past Thursday. Pyongyang, vitriolic in its denunciations, threatened a nuclear strike, cut its military hotline to South Korea and decided to scrap the armistice that ended the three-year Korean War in 1953.

The timing of a call for dialogue was bad because it could give the impression to the North Korean communists that South Korea was capitulating to their security threat. It was also bad for public relations in the South. No South Korean could be blamed if he wondered aloud why Seoul should help the North Korean communists when they were threatening a war against the South.

Nor was it prudent of the presidential office to make public, with no proper explanation, that President Park asked for China’s help in reopening dialogue with Pyongyang when she made a phone call to Chinese leader Xi Jinping to congratulate him on his inauguration as president. The report on the Park-Xi conversation, which provided few details regarding her request, could also give the impression to the North Korean communists that Park was impatient for dialogue.

More appropriately, Park should have called on China to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions before asking for help in restarting an inter-Korean dialogue. If there is any country that can do the job, it is China, the sole military ally for North Korea, which holds sway on its economy as its main trading partner and aid provider.

Tom Donilon, national security adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, acknowledged the potential role China could play in resolving the nuclear conflict when he addressed the New York-based Asia Society last week. He said, “And let me add that the prospects for a peaceful resolution also will require close U.S. coordination with China’s new government.”

With the Key Resolve maneuvers over now, the Park administration may choose to have a cooling-off period in which to put the “Korean Peninsula process of trust building” in perspective in the context of North Korea’s recently renewed security threat. It may also determine how it will fit the trust-building process in with the U.S. policy toward North Korea, as was outlined by Donilon ― close and expanded cooperation with South Korea and Japan, a refusal to reward North Korean bad behavior, an unequivocal commitment to the defense of the U.S. allies and continued encouragement to North Korea to choose a better path.

It should be worthwhile to have such a review ahead of President Park’s U.S. visit, scheduled for May. It could serve as a guide for Park when she consults with President Obama on the issue of coordinating their respective policies on North Korea. She also needs to coordinate her policy with her counterparts from China and Japan, Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe, at their trilateral summit that could also be held as early as May.