President Roh said today that he has no intention to ask North Korea for an apology for invading the South in 1950, since such a demand would be “unrealistic.”
From Yonhap:
Roh said inter-Korean relations should now change, and a South Korean request for an apology from the North would hinder the two countries’ efforts to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“There is a disparity between (the South) asking (the North) for an apology and inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. I want to ask advocates of a North Korean apology if they are opposed to inter-Korean peace,” Roh was quoted by his spokesperson as saying in a meeting with foreign correspondents based in Seoul.
“North Korea’s apology (for past wrongdoings) is a difficult question. In case of the end of a war, the loser is supposed to atone for the war damage and be liable for making an apology. But North Korea did not lose the war. It is not legally realistic to demand the North’s apology,” said Roh.
To be fair to Roh, he did say that calls for the North to accept responsibility and apologize for its aggression were justified, although unrealistic. He’s probably right on this point, although it does open him — and South Korean policy in general — to the criticism that apology demands are made only on, ahem, certain parties while not made on others because the latter would tell Seoul to take a flying leap, and therefore the way to counter apology demands from Seoul is to, well, tell it to take a flying leap. Which is probably not the message it wants to send to the former.
(HT to Lost Nomad)
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3 Comments
I don’t understand this. Is he a leftie who actually acknowledges who attacked whom?
(I do realize that it is not as simple as that, but it is important to note that the repulsive Bruce Cumings was wrong, is wrong, and will be wrong and that he can lick me world without end.)
He still likes to claim that a civil war was inevitable either way, but Cumings has long ago toned down his previous assertion that the south invaded the north.
By his thinking, Japan need not apologize to Korea for the colonial era because it did not lose to Korea eventually. It lost to the US.
or rather it is ‘not legally realistic’
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