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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| N. Korea Threatens to Release Tapes of Secret Meeting | |
| 2011-06-10 | |
| North Korea's National Defense Commission on Thursday threatened to release tapes of a secret inter-Korean meeting last month where the North says the South offered money for a series of cross-border summits. Amateur hour from the Norks... An official from the commission's policy department who was at the meetings warned Pyongyang will "release voice recordings of the entire meeting to the world" if South Korea "refuses to disclose the truth." The official was quoted by the state-run KCNA news agency. A Unification Ministry official challenged the North to omit nothing. "As Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said in the National Assembly on June 2, we don't have transcripts of any voice recordings. The government's position is that the North should disclose everything and distort nothing if these voice recordings really exist," he said.
But Democratic Party lawmaker Park Jie-won on Thursday tweeted the North should "immediately cancel its plan" to release the tapes. "Doing so will make it subject to international reproach, as well as enrage and disappoint those who are making efforts for genuine peace on the Korean Peninsula." On June 3, Park had been the first to suggest that there are transcripts of voice recordings from the meeting. The commission's policy department is believed to be an arm of the General reconnaissance Bureau, which masterminds attacks against the South. A ministry official said North Korea's aim in making the secret meetings public and threatening to release the recordings is "to cause conflict in the South and drive our government into the corner." Instead, it united them... Pyongyang denied the South Korean claim that the aim of the meeting was to get an apology from the North for last year's attacks on the Navy corvette Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island. "Unification Ministry official Kim Chun-sik said the secret meeting was arranged with direct instruction and approval from President" Lee Myung-bak "to realize a summit," the North Korean official said. The regime tried to embarrass the South Korean government by saying the South Korean delegates "entreated" and "begged" for a summit. It claimed that when the meeting came to a rupture, National Intelligence Service official Hong Chang-hwa, took an envelope of money from a suitcase on the instruction of Kim Tae-hyo, the presidential secretary for national security strategy. Perhaps if he had pulled out a ham sandwich... He said Hong tried to put the envelope into a North Korean delegate's hand, but the North Korean threw it away, and Hong blushed and became nervous. Hong then clumsily picked it up and he was so ashamed he could not even say goodbye properly, the official said. Definitely not KCNA style propaganda... | |
| Posted by:Steve White |