President Lee visits Yeonpyeongdo to show will to defend maritime border


President Lee Myung-bak on Thursday jumped into an escalating political battle over allegations that his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun renounced the Northern Limit Line as the de facto sea border.

Lee made a surprise visit to a marine artillery unit on Yeonpyeongdo near the NLL vowing to uphold the maritime border.

“All marines should bear in mind that we should protect the NLL even if we should risk our lives, up until the national reunification,” he said. “That is because we can maintain peace and protect the lives and safety of our people by doing so.

Lee was the first president to visit the frontline island, which the North shelled in November 2010, killing four people.

The visit is seen as a move to aid his Saenuri Party’s efforts to make the dispute over the NLL a key election issue.

The ruling party pressured the DUP to verify a fresh claim that the late former president ordered his office to destroy the minutes of his 2007 talks with former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

A Saenuri lawmaker has claimed that Roh denied the status of the NLL as the sea border during the summit.

The opposition Democratic United Party responded that the conservative rival was telling “another lie.” It demanded the Saenuri Party and its presidential candidate Rep. Park Geun-hye stop their “outmoded political ploy” to exploit the security issue to affect voter sentiment.

Saenuri lawmaker Chung Moon-hun first alleged on Oct. 8 that Roh had pledged to nullify the NLL during private, undisclosed talks with Kim in Pyongyang when DUP candidate Rep. Moon Jae-in served as Roh’s chief of staff. He refused to specify how he knew.

Moon’s camp repudiated it, stressing that there were no private talks between the two. He argued the talk of scrapping records of summit talks stems from the misunderstanding as to how Cheong Wa Dae’s electronic document management system works.

“As the North is not acting in a way favorable to its interests ahead of the December election, the Saenuri Party appears to be making a move of its own (to politically use the North). It is trying to mislead people with lies,” said Moon’s spokesperson Rep. Jin Sung-joon.

The Saenuri’s spokesperson Lee Sang-il said that the DUP should agree to “unearth the truth” behind the allegations.

“(Should he have ordered it), Roh might not have wanted to reveal what was talked about during the summit,” said Lee. “We want Moon, who served as his chief of staff, to explain why Roh ordered it and clarify his stance on whether the minutes should be open to read.”

Park’s camp has escalated its offensive against Moon, arguing that Roh’s alleged remarks over the NLL were tantamount to giving up part of South Korea’s maritime territory.

Political analysts cautioned against making the NLL issue political fodder given that voters are mature enough to discern politicking.

“This is a security issue where political bickering won’t help and will only lead to a public backlash. The parties should focus more on their security policies rather than making a media debacle,” said Lee Chung-hee, politics professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

To address “people’s suspicions,” the Saenuri Party members of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee suggested to the DUP on Wednesday that the ruling and opposition parties jointly open the minutes allegedly kept by the National Intelligence Service.

“Even if the parties agreed to it, the NIS could refuse to open it for the sake of national interest. But I will push for it as chairman of the intelligence committee,” said Rep. Suh Sang-ki of the Saenuri Party.

Rep. Chung has claimed that the minutes were kept by Seoul’s Unification Ministry and the intelligence agency. The NIS refuses to confirm whether the minutes exist. Cheong Wa Dae says it does not have such records and is not aware of whether it ever existed.

Under the law governing the management of presidential records, the minutes can be looked at when two-thirds of the 300 Assembly members approve of it. Military, unification and diplomatic records that could pose a “grave threat” to national security can be kept secret for a period of 15 years under the law.

North Korea has long challenged the NLL, seeking to make the seas south of the line a disputed region. The North contends the border line should be redrawn further south on the grounds that the demarcation was made unilaterally by Mark Wayne Clark, then head of the U.S.-led U.N. Command, at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Until 1973, Pyongyang remained relatively silent over it. But it violated the NLL 43 times between October and November in 1973 and has since continuously sought to nullify it, claiming sovereignty over the waters near the South’s frontline islands.

Seoul claims that the NLL divides the two Koreas’ territorial waters as it has served as a de-facto border for decades, and that the North, under a 1991 inter-Korean pact, agreed that the border was the line separating the de facto jurisdictional areas, which each side had controlled thus far.

The North, however, argues that the two sides have yet to reach any final agreement over the maritime demarcation line.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)