Yoon of South Korea demands unity on the anniversary of the 1919 rebellion against Japanese colonialism

Seoul, South Korea: Weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rejected the concept of peaceful unification and threatened to occupy the South in the case of war, South Korea’s president criticized North Korea on Friday for what he termed its harsh leadership and pledged to establish a free, undivided Korean Peninsula.

On March 1, Independence Movement Day—a festival commemorating a 1919 Korean rebellion against Japanese colonial rule—South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol delivered a speech.

Yoon said on television, “We have to move toward a free, unified Korean Peninsula right now.” “The North Korean regime imprisons its 26 million people in a maze of suffering and despair while relying exclusively on nuclear weapons and missiles.”

Yoon said, “To advance the universal values of freedom and human rights, unity is precisely what is needed.” “The people of North Korea must see our unification efforts as a source of hope and a beacon of light.”

Yoon and Kim’s divergent views on unification follow almost two years of heightened Korean tensions, during which North Korea has increased missile launches and South Korea has increased US military exercises in a tit-for-tat fashion.

Leaders of the two Koreas, who are separated by the most highly militarized border in the world, have valued unification for the majority of the 70 years since the conclusion of the 1950–1953 Korean War. However, commentators think there is very little chance that the prosperous, democratic South and the allegedly socialist, autocratic, and impoverished North will ever come together.

North Korea has seemed politically stable despite years of economic mismanagement and severe sanctions imposed by the United States. Since the failure of Kim’s high-stakes nuclear talks with then-President Donald Trump in 2019, exchange programs between the Koreas have remained idle.

Kim pledged in a speech given in January to amend the constitution to eliminate the long-standing official objective of peaceful Korean unification and to establish South Korea as the nation’s “invariable principal enemy.” According to him, the new constitution has to state that in the event of another conflict, North Korea will annex and conquer the South. It surprised onlookers that unity had been abandoned so abruptly.

According to many observers, Kim probably wanted to be the one to initiate contact with the South while simultaneously attempting to reduce the impact of South Korean culture and strengthen his family’s authority at home.

Yoon referred to Kim’s pledge of hatred as “truly deplorable” during Friday’s address. He had before said that Kim’s address demonstrated the North Korean government’s “anti-national and anti-historical” stance.

Yoon’s address avoided discussing the atrocities committed in Korea by the Japanese colonial masters, which left behind terrible memories and have long been a cause of friction between the two nations.

Leif-Eric Easley, an international studies professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said that Yoon highlighted his administration’s better ties with Tokyo on a festival honoring Korea’s fight against Japanese colonization a century ago. “He underlined that the liberation of the northern and southern parts of the Korean Peninsula is a prerequisite for the completion of the independence movement.”

Yoon has tried to strengthen South Korea’s military alliance with the United States and settle historical grievances with Japan since entering office in 2022. The goal is to strengthen the Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo coalition in opposition to North Korea’s nuclear threats.

Yoon said, “Korea and Japan are now cooperating to move past the terrible past.” Because our two nations uphold the same principles of liberty, justice, and the rule of law, they have joined forces to further their shared goals of world peace and prosperity.