[Editorial] Envoy? What envoy?

North Korea has warned that it will not be able to guarantee the safety of Pyongyang-based foreign diplomats after this coming Wednesday, calling on the embassies to consider evacuation. It cites a potential conflict with South Korea and the United States as the reason.

Some countries take North Korea’s call for embassy evacuation seriously. Among them is Brazil, whose foreign minister was quoted as saying he could decide to move his ambassador to China’s border city of Dandong after evaluating what the conditions were really like. But other countries regard the warning as part of North Korea’s continuing rhetoric.

The request for evacuation is one of the latest ploys to raise tensions through a series of bellicose public statements and other provocations against South Korea and the United States.

Pyongyang has maintained the United States poses a threat to its security since the U.N. Security Council imposed U.S.-led sanctions on the communist state last month against its third nuclear test in February. It has also threatened to shut down an industrial complex built by South Korea for its small and medium-sized corporations in the North Korean border town of Gaeseong.

As Pyongyang continues to ramp up security threats, some South Korean lawmakers, from both the ruling and main opposition parties, are calling on President Park Geun-hye to send a special emissary to North Korea with a mission to deescalate tensions.

Moon Hee-sang, interim leader of the opposition Democratic United Party, said it would be appropriate to send a special emissary at this time of crisis. The party’s floor leader, who also called for the dispatch of an envoy, said South Korea needs to help the North save face in disengaging itself from the dangerous confrontation. Some lawmakers from the ruling Saenuri Party joined the opposition lawmakers in calling on the president to send a special emissary.

But what this group of lawmakers was doing was little different from asking President Park to blink first in a deadly game of chicken. The danger is that North Korea could regard an offer to send an emissary as an act of capitulation to its brinkmanship.

The presidential office was right to say that it was not considering dispatching any special emissary at the moment. It also did the right thing when it decided it would not beg the North to keep operating the industrial complex should it decide to close it. South Korea cannot allow itself to be bossed around.