'North Korea remains hostile toward South Korea'

President Moon Jae-in, right, talks with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, left, after Kim held his third summit with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Freedom House in the South's side of the Joint Security Area (JSA), June 30. Trump is walking between the leaders of the two Koreas in this photo. Korea Times file

By Jung Da-min

North Korea's party policy toward South Korea was still hostile even after three summits between the North's leader Kim Jong―un and President Moon Jae-in, a North Korean document for internal circulation recently obtained by Japanese outlet Tokyo Shimbun has revealed.

The report was prepared last November for the ideological education of officials at the North's Ministry of People's Security, police officers and soldiers of Korean People's Army.

The document described the South Korean government's gift of 200 tons of tangerines from Jeju Island to North Korea as the North's "loot."

Last November, North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Kim "was presented with a significant gift by President of South Korea Moon Jae-in," in return for Songi mushrooms sent by Kim to Moon after their third summit two months before.

The article, however, had been removed from the KCNA website as well as from other propaganda websites run by the North Korean government when accessed by The Korea Times at the time of publication of this article.

Moon and Kim held their third summit in Pyongyang from Sept. 18 to 20, vowing to boost inter-Korean projects such as opening an inter-Korean liaison office in the North's Gaeseong and excavation of war remains in the Demilitarized Zone.

Such projects, however, have seen little progress, with the North showing minimal participation in the case of the inter-Korean liaison office, and none at all for the joint war remains excavation project.

"The document showed how the North's leader Kim Jong-un sees President Moon and the South Korean government," said Oh Gyeong-seob, a research fellow at the North Korean Studies Division of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU).

Lee Soo-seok, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, said that the document showed that the North's leadership was worried that people in the North had been swayed by the South Korean government's gift.

"While North Korea's economy was struggling due to international sanctions, the North's leadership seemed to have wanted to tighten internal solidarity of its people by tightening ideological education," Lee said.

Meanwhile, the North Korean document also criticized the U.S. for its stance on complete denuclearization being a prerequisite of sanctions relief.

The denuclearization talks between North Korea and the U.S. have seen little progress since the breakdown of the Hanoi summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in February.

Trump and Kim held their third summit last month at the South's side of the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarized Zone. But the working level talks between the U.S. and North Korea, which were initially expected to be held in July, are being delayed.

Last Thursday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) in what is widely seen as a protest against the U.S. for not giving the North what it wants from the denuclearization negotiations.