The Marmot’s Hole

And from the Grand Festival for National Reunification:

• Civilian delegations from the two Koreas issued a joint statement that, well, was pretty much what you’d expect from that crew:
  

  “Now, we face the historic responsibility to open a new era toward unification, braving all kinds of challenges and adverse winds against the tide of unification by our own efforts,” the statement said. “Let us achieve independence for the Korean people by refusing unjust intrusion by foreign powers into inter-Korean issues.”

• Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok did tell North Korean delegation head An Kyong-ho that his comments about the Grand National Party were inappropriate. The GNP is demanding a public apology, while the Unification Ministry has expressed regret over North Korea’s meddling in South Korean affairs. Lee also warned An that the South had lost quite a bit of patience with Pyongyang stalling over trial runs of intra-Korean rail service.
• The National Action Campaign for Freedom and Democracy in Korea, a rightwing group composed mostly of hardcore retired military officers like the Retired Colonels’ Association of the Republic of Korea, today held a rally where they called for the abandonment of the June 15 Joint Declaration. They also claimed the Roh administration was protecting North Korean agents in order to promote a mood of reconciliation between the two Korea, citing the government’s pardon of Min Gyeong-woo, a former executive member of the southern branch of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification (see this State Department report). Attending the rally as a speaker, GNP lawmaker Chun Yu-ok (OK, not one of my favorites) slammed the June 15 Joint Declaration as a complete failure that has benefited only Kim Jong-il at the expense of the North Korean people. She said what the South Korean people wanted was not silence about North Korean human rights abuse, but instead a North Korea policy framed with the agreement of the citizenry. She also said South Korea, as a member of the international community, needed to adopt a firm policy to get the North to abandon its nuclear program. Oh, and she also said Kim Jong-il needed to get his butt down to Seoul; for former President Kim Dae-jung to revisit the North amounted to rendering the June 15 Joint Declaration null and void. The best line, however, were dropped by former Monthly Chosun editor Cho Gap-je, who’s always good for quote:
  

  The June 15 Joint Declaration has under the unification flag divided the [South Korean] citizens into traitors and patriots who have gathered before the South Korean flag… The June 15 Joint Declaration must be abolished immediately, those connected punished and the Democratic Labor Party, which supports a federation with North Korea, dissolved.”

  Alrighty then…

• This has nothing to do with the June 15 Joint Declaration, but the government is taking talk of a possible North Korean missile test very seriously. This would seem to suggest Seoul is sitting on pretty reliable intel, because the South Koreans usually downplay such talk. Not so in this case—as I mentioned before, the government has made it clear to the North Koreans that a test might force a change in policy direction not to Pyongyang’s liking, and even Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon is expressing concern.