While lawmakers continue their political tit-for-tat over bribery scandals involving President Park Geun-hye’s close associates, an unlikely figure has shifted political talk in a completely new direction.
Former Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, in his memoir released last week, said that presidential aides and cabinet members serving at the previous, liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration had inquired of North Korea about whether Seoul should vote to adopt a 2007 UN resolution condemning Pyeongyang’s human rights situation.
In the book titled “Moving the Glacier,” the 68-year-old retired diplomat claimed that his objection to the inquiry was shot down by others including former Minjoo Party of Korea’s leader Moon Jae-in, who then served as presidential chief of staff.
“I insisted that we should approve the vote for longer term; It was quite obvious what sort of answer we would get if we asked North Korea (about the vote),” he wrote. “After a long debate, we concluded that we should ask. I couldn’t argue anymore. Walking out of the meeting, I felt so ashamed of myself.”
The eight-page description -- an excerpt from the 550-page volume -- puts Song, who now works as the president of the University of North Korean Studies, into the national spotlight as his former colleagues disputed his claim and political parties subjected his book to partisan conflict.
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Former Foreign Minister Song Min-soon is flanked by reporters as he arrives at his office in Seoul on Monday. (Yonhap) |
Song argued that the Roh administration decided to withdraw the vote after hearing negative response from the North, but the previous government’s policymakers countered that they had already decided on the abstention before contacting the North.
When abstaining from a vote on the 2007 UN resolution, the Roh administration described the move as a decision based on “unique circumstance” between the two Korea who had just held summits about a month before. A year earlier, the South had approved a similar UN motion, but it happened after the North’s nuclear test.
Then presidential chief of staff Moon, who discussed the voting issue with Song and other former Cabinet members, said Monday that he did not remember exactly what happened. He had not clarified his position beforehand.
“(The attendants of the meeting) say I was leaning toward the position of the Foreign Minister (Song) but shifted my position toward the majority (who advocated abstention). Well, I don’t quite remember,” said Moon in an interview with reporters Monday
Those who attended the meeting with Song asserted that the memoir contains information based on an “inaccurate memory,” reflecting a “biased view” from the former minister who wanted Seoul to take a more assertive tone against Pyongyang, working in tandem with the international community and the United States.
“I don’t think Song’s book is accurate because memoirs are often self-centered,” Lee Jae-jung, who was the unification minister at the time, said in a media interview Monday. Advocating abstention, he had clashed with Song throughout the decision-making process, Lee recalled.
The former minister, one of the staunchest advocates of the Roh administration’s rapprochement policy toward the North, argued that their decision to contact North Korea was not to “inquire” about Pyeongyang’s position, but to “notify” of Seoul’s decision adopted by the majority of the presidential aides and Cabinet members.
Kim Man-bok, who then headed the National Intelligence Service, also disputed Song’s claim that he himself was the one who first proposed the idea of asking the North. He denounced Song for leaking classified information and vowed to testify before the lawmakers to prove himself.
Describing the mounting controversy over his book as “unhelpful” to building effective policies toward North Korea and its nuclear threat, Song maintained that his memoir contains the truth and urged the people to see the book in a boarder context.
“Pulling just one piece of the book dealing with two Koreas’ unification and North Korea’s nuclear weapon does not do any justice to anyone,” Song told reporters in the afternoon. “My book is based on records, not memories.”
The former minister went on to defend the accusation that his book, published just a year away from the 2017 presidential election, has a political motive targeting the opposition bloc’s front-runner Moon while aiding politicians close to him such as the outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Rep. Park Beom-kye of the Minjoo Party claimed that Song devoted hefty portions of his book to praising the tenure of Ban, who served as foreign minister between 2004 and 2006 before Song took over his job.
“I began writing the book three years ago and tried to publish it last year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 19 Joint Statement,” Song said, referring to the landmark 2005 agreement calling for verifiable denuclearization of the North. “But it took a year more than I thought,” he said.
Moon Chung-in, professor emeritus of Yonsei University, disputed that Song’s memoir has a political purpose, noting that the book is an account of the bureaucratic struggle between a hawkish foreign minister and dovish unification minister over how to deal with North Korea.
“As far as I know, Song is not the type of person to promote certain presidential candidates,” said Moon, who held high-profile posts dealing with relations between the two Koreas during the Roh administration. “Song just wanted to write about his legacy as a foreign minister.”
By Yeo Jun-suk (
jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)
