[Editorial] DMZ peace park

Hours after an abrupt instruction from President Park Guen-hye on Tuesday, Seoul’s Unification Ministry proposed talks with Pyongyang on bringing South Korean products and raw materials out of a suspended joint industrial complex in a North Korean border city. The proposal was seen as reflecting Park’s hope to reopen dialogue with the North to put on track her initiative for building inter-Korean trust in parallel with keeping a firm posture against provocations.

Recently emerging as a symbolic project in the Korean Peninsula trust-building process is the creation of a peace park in the Demilitarized Zone that has separated the two Koreas for the past six decades. Park suggested the idea during her address to the joint session of U.S. Congress last week. Saying the DMZ “must live up to its name ― a zone that strengthens peace, not undermines it,” she hoped to work toward an international park inside the heavily fortified strip of land. Park noted the place would send “a message of peace to all of humanity.”

The idea evolved from her pledge made during last year’s presidential campaign to promote tourism in the areas near the DMZ by forging an ecological conservation belt. She put more political touches to the original proposal to make it an international project to be pursued in parallel with her trust-building process.

Park is known to have discussed the idea with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. officials, drawing favorable responses from them, during her visit to New York and Washington. The global body could play a role in persuading North Korea, one of its members, to join the project.

Her aides say Park’s will to push through the initiative is strong and in-depth reviews have been underway on preparatory work. North Korea’s response will hold the key to realizing the idea, which Park seems to be seeking for a breakthrough in the frozen inter-Korean ties.

In a reflection of the views held by the Pyongyang leadership, an Internet website serving as the North’s propaganda tool denounced the proposal early this week as rash and unacceptable. It said the DMZ was a symbol of national hatred and disgrace, which should be removed as soon as possible.

If North Korea truly believes the zone should be eliminated, there is no reason that it continues to reject the idea of creating a space that will demonstrate all Koreans’ will to move in that direction along a peaceful path.