SEOUL — South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak, meeting with foreign reporters for the first time yesterday, promised to effect a great transformation of his country after he takes office next month.
At a wide-ranging press conference, the conservative leader defended his plan to dissolve the ministry dedicated to relations with North Korea and promised steps to improve relations with Washington and reassure foreign investors.
I will take the lead in undertaking a great transformation, said Mr. Lee, who takes his oath of office Feb. 25. He said it will be a transformation where old structures are replaced by concepts that lead us into the future.
Mr. Lee”s transition team announced on Wednesday that it plans to fold the functions of the Unification Ministry, established in 1969, into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Unification Ministry has led implementation of the sunshine policy of economic engagement with North Korea over the past 10 years. But the policy has been criticized as ineffectual by some conservatives.
The function still remains, but the ministry will be integrated, Mr. Lee said. Relations between the Koreas are so complex, one ministry cannot take care of it.
The United New Democratic Party of outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun has vowed to resist the plan in the National Assembly, where it holds a majority, but assembly elections in April could change that.
’Frustrated’ is the word to describe the mood here, said a senior source at the ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
We think it is important to have a ministry completely devoted to inter-Korean affairs, the source said. North Korea is peculiar; the government cannot handle North Korea like a normal state. The two Koreas have no diplomatic relations and remain technically at war.
Mr. Lee, who has criticized the Roh administration for its unconditional carrots but no sticks support of North Korea, has said he will massively reward Pyongyang if it denuclearizes but is vague on what sticks he would wield.
Options include a suspension of inter-Korean economic projects, such as the Kaesong Special Industrial Zone or the Kaesong and Mt. Kumgang tourism zones.
Mr. Lee, however, sidestepped two questions yesterday about what sanctions he would use to prod the North toward denuclearization and improved human rights conditions.
Six-party talks on North Korea are deadlocked over what Washington considers an insufficiently detailed declaration of Pyongyang”s atomic programs.
Mr. Lee has also promised to improve political and military relations with the U.S., which have suffered at times under the Roh and Bush administrations.
I see the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command as the symbolic entity of the bilateral alliance, he told Gen. Burwell Bell, U.S. Forces Korea commander Tuesday during a visit to U.S. troops” central Seoul base.
The two nations plan to switch from U.S. to local command in 2012; Mr. Lee”s transition team has mulled delaying that change, though U.S. Ambassador to Korea Alexander Vershbow insists it will go ahead.
On Wednesday, Mr. Lee met American, European and Japanese investors, many of whom are concerned at Korea”s lack of transparency and its unpredictable bureaucracy.
Mr. Lee said he would run a business-friendly government … that will also apply to foreign businessmen.
Overseas investors have been spooked by the case of John Grayken, a Dallas-based fund manager undergoing intensive questioning in Seoul by prosecutors who suspect him of stock manipulation.
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