Seoul's policy on Pyongyang unchanged despite new deals on joint ventures:

(ATTN: UPDATES with Seoul's response to Pyongyang's condemnation of its planned
rocket launch in last 8 paras)
By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Yonhap) -- The keynote of South Korea's policy towards North
Korea remains unchanged despite a civilian-led breakthrough in stalled
inter-Korean economic projects, Seoul's foreign ministry said Monday.

"There is no change in the keynote of our government's policy in dealing with
North Korea," ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said at a press briefing. "A
change in the future situation will depend on North Korea's attitude and
position."
He was responding to a question about whether the agreement between North Korea
and Hyundai Group, announced earlier in the day, will affect global efforts to
implement the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1984 that aims to curb the inflow
of money that North may divert to its missile and nuclear program. The
resolution, adopted after Pyongyang's nuclear test in May, imposes a wide-ranging
set of financial and trade sanctions on the communist nation.
"The government will review the issue after getting the details of the
agreement," Moon said.
Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun met with the North's leader Kim Jong-il
in Pyongyang and agreed to resume the suspended tourism business to Kaesong, an
ancient city just north of the two Korea's border, and Mount Kumgang along its
east coast.
South Korea's Lee Myung-bak administration has linked any substantive economic
aid and inter-Korean economic cooperation to progress in Pyongyang's
denuclearization, a policy seriously undermined by the impoverished nation's
long-range rocket and nuclear tests over the last five months.
The Security Council resolution was adopted following those tests, strengthening
sanctions on Pyongyang.
Moon dismissed the North's argument that the South's upcoming space rocket launch
should also be subject to such U.N. sanctions.
Earlier this month, the North's foreign ministry said Pyongyang will "closely
watch" how regional powers respond to South Korea's launch of its first space
rocket, the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), slated for Wednesday.
The North insists that its rocket launch in April was aimed at putting a
communication satellite in orbit, but the international community believes it was
a test of ballistic missile technology.
"Their (neighboring nations') reaction and attitude towards South Korea's
satellite launch will once again clearly prove whether the principle of equality
exists or has collapsed," an unnamed spokesman for the North Korean foreign
ministry told Pyongyang's official news agency, the (North) Korean Central News
Agency.
The South Korean ministry spokesman drew a clear line between Seoul's space
program and Pyongyang's rocket launch.
It is "inappropriate" to compare Seoul's space program with that of Pyongyang,
which is banned from engaging in ballistic missile programs under previous U.N.
resolutions, Moon said.
"The international community is demanding that each nation pursue peaceful and
transparent space activity to prevent space vehicle technology from being used
for that of ballistic missiles, given the similarities of the technologies or the
characteristics of dual use," he said.
South Korea's rocket launch will be transparent and safe, and for peaceful
purposes in strict accordance with international norms, he added.
lcd@yna.co.kr
(END)