[2018-02-21]
The DPRK’s dispatch of a high-level delegation as well as artistes, players and boosters to the ongoing Winter Olympics in south Korea has injected fresh air into inter-Korean relations, attracting the focus of attention at home and abroad.
Much upset, however, the south Korean conservatives are trying more frantically to check inter-Korean fence-mending.
Hong Jun Phyo and others of the Liberty Korea Party censure the authorities, saying that “the government has been duped by the north’s harassing tactics and is neutralizing the UN’s anti-north sanctions network by itself, and it should make the north well aware that the abandonment of its nuclear programme is the only way to ensure the safety of its system”.
In particular, they expressed “serious concern over the authorities’ inhospitable treatment of the US and excessively cordial reception of the north’s high-level delegation,” arguing that the “president received a showy present of personal message and summit from the north” and “his visit to the north without its abandonment of nuclear programme will be tantamount to congratulating its nuclear development, which is an apparent enemy-benefiting act”.
Choson Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo and other conservative media outlets maintained a stream of invective and abuse against the activities of the DPRK’s delegations, describing them as “acting as a host in other’s feast” and a “hidden intention to induce south Korea-US discord for neutralizing anti-north sanctions”. And the conservative groups acted rashly by flocking to wherever the northern personnel go and staging anti-DPRK protests, waving the south Korean flag and the Stars and Stripes.
Such reckless acts against the thaw in inter-Korean relations are nothing but an epileptic frenzy of mad dogs who are blind to the trend of the times towards détente.
It seems to the conservatives of the Liberty Korea Party that the songs sung by the northern artistes, the resounding cheer of the northern rooters that “Korea is one” and the excited reply of the south Korean public sound like the death knell.
With them intact, it is natural that the growing atmosphere of inter-Korean reconciliation and the enthusiasm for national reunification cannot but be a nightmare.
They only make desperate efforts to put a damper on the hard-won atmosphere of inter-Korean rapprochement regardless of whether the Olympics would be spoiled or a war may break out in a bid to sustain the remainder of their lives.
The more noisily they bark to stop the trend toward détente and national unity, the more clearly they will reveal their true colours as dregs of society.
A handful of conservatives should behave themselves, well aware that they are running their heads against a wall.
By Song Jong Ho PT