North Korea’s top governing body on Saturday blasted President Park Geun-hye’s reunification policy as a “psychopath’s daydream” in its first official response to the so-called Dresden Declaration.
“The Dresden Declaration is a nonsensical statement made by an anti-reunification element who deceived the public with hypocrisy and deception as she offered no solution, ignorant of the present state of the North-South relations,” the powerful National Defense Commission said.
In an address in Dresden last month, Park unveiled a package of proposals on laying the groundwork for reunification. She urged the North to expand reunions of families separated by the division of Korea and increase cross-border economic and cultural exchanges, starting with the South bolstering humanitarian aid.
“The proposal is irrelevant and indifferent to the improvement and development of the inter-Korean relations,” a spokesman of the NDC said in a statement carried out by the state-run official news outlet the Korean Central News Agency.
“Germany’s unity is for us an example and model for a peaceful reunification,” she had said.
An NDC spokesman noted that German reunification came about with the West absorbing the East. He accused Park of begging foreign countries to help bring about a reunification in which South Korea absorbed the North.
“This is merely a daydream of a psychopath,” he said, denouncing Park’s proposal, billed as the “Dresden Declaration” by Seoul, as “nonsense” full of “hypocrisy and deception.”
“The fact that in that particular place, Park Geun-hye lashed her tongue about reunification gave away her sinister mind,” he said in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s state media.
The North Korean spokesman urged Seoul to abide by earlier agreements including a landmark agreement signed in 2000, stressing that all these previous accords gave priority to addressing the issue of easing military confrontation.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high since the South launched annual military exercises with the United States in February, described by Pyongyang as a rehearsal for an invasion.
In a pointed protest at the exercises, Pyongyang carried out a series of rocket and missile launches, capped by its first mid-range missile test since 2009 on March 26.
The two Koreas also traded artillery fire across the tense Yellow Sea border on March 31, after the North dropped around 100 shells across the maritime boundary during a live-fire drill.
The exchange followed a North Korean warning that it might carry out a “new” form of nuclear test ― a possible reference to a uranium-based device or a miniaturized warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.
Park also said in the Dresden speech that the South would help funnel international funding for the North’s economic development should Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons program.
But the NDC spokesman said: “They should bear in mind that the tongue-lashing of Park Geun-hye is the first root cause of the deterioration of the North-South relations and beclouding the prospect of the nation.”
“It is the unanimous view of the public that the North-South relations will become smoother only if Park keeps her disgusting mouth closed,” he said.
Despite its verbal attacks, professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said Pyongyang was likely to ease up and return to dialogue late this month as the South and the United States were winding up their military exercises.
Diplomatic efforts to resuscitate long-stalled six-party talks on disarming North Korea also appear to have been rekindled.
The U.S. State Department said Friday that special envoy Glyn Davies would meet with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in New York and Washington next week for discussions on the denuclearization of North Korea.
Wu on Friday held talks with South Korean counterpart Hwang Joon-kuk in Beijing on ways to “resume meaningful dialogue” aimed at bringing about “substantial progress” in the North’s denuclearization, Hwang told journalists.
