President Kim Firm On Tactic

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President Kim Firm On Tactic

In an interview Tuesday with the BBC, President Kim Dae-jung said that taking away the threat of hunger and war is just as important as advancing human rights in North Korea.

"In our current talks with North Korea, we are at a stage where we are tackling first the projects and issues that will be easy for us to work together on," the president said.

"Thus, it is not appropriate, at the moment, to raise issues that may provoke either side," the president said when questioned by the BBC on the issue of human rights in North Korea.

According to presidential aides, the Seoul government, for the meantime, will not officially address the human rights issue in its dialogue with the North.

On winning this year's Nobel Peace Prize for jumpstarting a peace process on the peninsula, Mr. Kim said that he regrets that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il did not jointly receive the award. He then thanked the North Korean leaders for his role in bringing Korea its first Nobel Prize.

On the question of whether he trusted the North Korean leader, the president shot back with a question.

"Do you think former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt wholly trusted his East German counterparts when he was launching the Ostpolitik," he asked.

The president then answered his own question, saying that Mr. Brandt pursued unification with the East Germans because it was the right thing for the German people to do, regardless of ideological differences.




by Kim Jin-kook

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