Opposition leader urges Lee to seek summit with N. Korea

By Tony Chang
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's opposition leader on Thursday urged
President Lee Myung-bak to "aggressively" seek a summit with North Korea and
strive to replace the truce of the Korean War with a peace treaty.
"President Lee should aggressively seek an inter-Korean summit. Now is the time
for the leaders from Koreas to discuss a peace treaty and the future of the
Korean Peninsula," Chung Sye-kyun, chairman of the main opposition Democratic
Party (DP), said in a news conference.
The comments came amid speculation that the two Koreas may push for a third
summit between their leaders this year to mend ties and boost reconciliation.
Previous ones took place in 2000 and 2007 under the past two liberal
administrations.
On News Year's day, the North issued a statement in the form of joint editorial
of newspapers expressing its willingness to improve ties with South Korea. Koreas
remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.
The relationship between the two Koreas had rapidly chilled after Lee's
conservative government came to power in 2008 and became further strained after
the North's nuclear test in May of last year.
The mood, however, shifted to a more conciliatory stance some months later when
North Korea reached out to Seoul and Washington for dialogue.
Chung also argued that the "outdated truce should be replaced by a peace treaty
that embodies hope for the Korean Peninsula," noting that this year marks the
60th anniversary of the truce.
Pyongyang has repeatedly made clear that it wants to forge a peace treaty with
the U.S. to replace the armistice. The U.S. position is that any peace treaty
should be discussed within the framework of the six-party talks, which also
involve South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.
The opposition leader said that the president should break away from a "Cold War
mind frame" to refrain from hardline policy approaches towards the North, noting
his party will fully cooperate with the current administration over the
inter-Korean summit.
On the domestic front, Chung called for the government to suspend a plan to
restore four major rivers in the country, claiming that the cost of the
large-scale project would weigh down on the livelihood of the public.
Proposed by the president, the project calls for the government to spend 3.5
trillion won (US$2.98 billion) by 2012 to restore the country's four major rivers
-- the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan -- in order to prevent floods and cope
with water shortages.
"People's lives are faltering on the trillions of wons to be spent on the
project. The people's despair is deepening from the four-river project," Chung
said.
Critics of the four-river restoration project argue that the plan is a
replacement of the president's earlier "grand canal" scheme, which called for a
network of cross-country waterways but was scrapped due to immense public
opposition and criticism from environmental and opposition groups.
odissy@yna.co.kr
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