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The Jerusalem Post

South Korea's Yoon tells unification ministry to be less soft on North

 
 Three ROK soldiers watching the border at Panmunjeom in the DMZ between North and South Korea, 2008 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Three ROK soldiers watching the border at Panmunjeom in the DMZ between North and South Korea, 2008
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

South Korea's new unification minister advocates for his ministry to be harder on the north.

Having appointed a new unification minister days earlier, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Sunday that the ministry had focused too much on providing aid for North Korea in the past and needed to change, Yonhap news agency reported.

The new minister Kim Yung-ho is a conservative scholar and outspoken critic human rights abuses in North Korea, which Yoon has sought to spotlight amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

"The Unification Ministry has been acting like the ministry of North Korea aid and it is wrong," Yoon was quoted as saying telling staff in a statement issued by his press secretary. "It's time for the unification ministry to change."

What did Yoon say?

According to the report, Yoon urged the ministry to stand up for liberal democratic values, and said unification should bring a "better and more human life" to people in the South and North.

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 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae watch a test launch of a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Hwasong-18 at an undisclosed location in this still image of a photo used in a video released on April 14, 202 (credit: KCNA/VIA REUTERS)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae watch a test launch of a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Hwasong-18 at an undisclosed location in this still image of a photo used in a video released on April 14, 202 (credit: KCNA/VIA REUTERS)

In 2019, Kim wrote in an online column that the path to unification would open once North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's "regime is overthrown and North Korea is liberated."

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