Seoul welcomes N. Korean leader's call for denuclearization amid lingering doubt

(ATTN: MODIFIES headline, lead, INSERTS Seoul's restriction on anti-Pyongyang
campaign, analysts' view)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Jan. 28 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Wednesday welcomed North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il's reported commitment to a nuclear-free peninsula and moved to
restrict an anti-Pyongyang propaganda campaign in the South as deep freeze in
inter-Korean relations continued.

In a meeting with a visiting Chinese official last week, Kim said he does not
want to raise tension on the Korean Peninsula and hopes to work with China to
advance the six-way nuclear negotiations, according to Chinese state media.
"If these remarks are true, we view them positively," Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for
South Korea's Unification Ministry handling North Korea affairs, said in a
briefing after the Lunar New Year's holiday.
"Our government has a consistent position of developing inter-Korean relations
through dialogue," he said.
In his first appearance to a foreign guest in nearly half a year, Kim Jong-il was
quoted by China's Xinhua news agency as saying, "The North Korean side will
commit itself to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and hopes to
co-exist peacefully with other involved parties."
He also told the visiting Chinese party official, Wang Jiarui, that North Korea
"does not want to see tensions emerge on the peninsula."
Under a 2007 deal, North Korea has been disabling its nuclear facilities in
exchange for energy and diplomatic incentives from regional countries grouping
South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. But the denuclearization
process is now on hold due to a dispute over how to verify the North's past
nuclear activities.
North Korea has beckoned the new U.S. administration of Barack Obama to roll out
an engagement policy toward it after eight combative years with George W. Bush.
Washington welcomed with caution the North Korean leader's call for a
denuclearized peninsula. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said on Friday
that Kim's remarks were "a good thing" but added, "we hope to see the North
adhere to what it agreed to."
In an apparent attempt to not provoke Pyongyang, the Seoul government on
Wednesday announced it will outlaw the use of North Korean bills for an
anti-North Korea propaganda leaflet campaign.
Organizations of North Korean defectors and families of abducted South Koreans
said earlier this month that they will send North Korean money along with a new
batch of leaflets set to be flown to North Korea in February.
Pyongyang has repeatedly condemned the leaflet campaign as "provocative."
"The government's position is that it should not permit bringing in North Korean
bills, due to concern that it may damage the order of inter-Korean exchanges,"
unification ministry spokesman Kim told reporters.
The activists have been sending the leaflets via gas-filled balloons across the
border, hoping to inform the North's citizens of the nature of their regime and
of the outside world. The leaflets attack leader Kim as a prodigal womanizer who
relishes expensive wine and cars.
The activists started to insert U.S. one dollar bills in the flyers in April last
year to encourage more North Koreans to pick them up. But rumors that North
Korean authorities are incarcerating those found with $1 notes prompted them to
replace them with North Korean currency, the activists said.
Paik Hak-soon, a senior fellow with the Sejong Institute, an independent think
tank, viewed the decision to ban the use of North Korean bills as a positive step
for inter-Korean relations, but said that was not enough to break the impasse.
"Small action is better than no action, but the ban is only about North Korean
money, not the leaflet campaign as a whole that aims to directly attack the North
Korean leader," he said.
Kim Young-soo, a political science professor of Sogang University, said the
government should not interfere with the activists' campaign. He questioned
whether the North Korean leader is sincere about denuclearization and
inter-Korean relations, pointing to Pyongyang's continuing saber-rattling against
Seoul.
"We don't know yet whether leader Kim is genuinely committed to
denuclearization," he said, "If his remarks were only meant to be diplomatic and
ceremonial, our unification ministry has acted too hastily."
Pyongyang recently intensified its tirades against Seoul after President Lee
Myung-bak named his hawkish foreign policy adviser, Hyun In-taek, as new
unification minister. Hyun was a close policy adviser to Lee during his
presidential campaign and helped him formulate a tougher stance on North Korea's
nuclear program than his liberal predecessors.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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