South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak Sunday urged North Korea to end its military provocations and make a "courageous change" as he laid out a long-term plan for reunification. "It is about time Pyongyang looked straight at reality, made a courageous change and came up with a drastic decision," Lee said.
The Koreas "need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification," he said in a speech to celebrate Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.
Lee also warned that South Korea would not tolerate any military provocations from North Korea. "The North must never venture to carry out another provocation nor will we tolerate it if they do so again," he said.
Cross-border tensions have been high since late May when South Korea and the United States accused Pyongyang of attacking a South Korean warship. The North, which vehemently denies the accusation, threatened retaliation after US and South Korean troops staged naval drills in a show of force. Relations further worsened after North Korea last weekend seized a South Korean squid fishing boat operating off the east coast.
The North also fired an artillery barrage into waters in the Yellow Sea a week ago when South Korea wrapped up its biggest anti-submarine drill. In his speech, Lee detailed a multi-step blueprint for reunification, starting with a "peace community" after the peninsula is cleared of nuclear weapons.
The next step is to dramatically develop the North's economy and form an "economic community in which the two will work for economic integration", he said. Finally, the Koreas would be able "to remove the wall of different systems" and establish a community which will ensure "dignity, freedom and basic rights of all individuals", he said.
"Through this process, we can ultimately bring about the peaceful unification of Korea," he added. Lee also proposed "unification tax" to finance the hefty cost of reuniting the long-divided nations with a growing economic gap. Reunification with its impoverished neighbour would cost the South about 1.3 trillion dollars, according to a study commissioned by a parliamentary committee. Central bank data showed the North's gross domestic product last year stood at 24.7 billion dollars, less than three percent of South Korea's.
Lee, who is halfway through his single five-year term, has advocated a hard-line approach towards Pyongyang unlike his liberal predecessors. In his biggest cabinet reshuffle a week ago, Lee kept his foreign, defence and unification ministers in place, signalling little change in his policy.
The Korean peninsula was divided into a communist North and a capitalist South after Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945 at the end of World War II ended its annexation of the peninsula.
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