Unification minister urges North to stop provocations

South Korea's unification minister called on North Korea Monday to drop provocative actions and come to the bargaining table to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The North fired a short-range missile into the East Sea on Sunday, a day after shooting three short-range projectiles, presumed by Seoul to be missiles or artillery shells, off the Korean Peninsula's east coast in defiance of the international community's warnings against hostile actions.

"North Korea should end its repetition of criticism (of the South) and rejection of the proposal for talks," Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said in a speech to a local forum on North Korean human rights conditions. "North Korea should come forward and respond to our efforts to promote joint development."

Seoul will help the North with substantial assistance in improving human rights conditions in the communist country, the minister said, adding it may not be easy for the underdeveloped country to achieve rights enhancement in a short-period of time.

To that end, Seoul will continue its humanitarian aid to children, pregnant women and other underprivileged North Koreans despite any political tensions between the two countries, said South Korea's point man on the communist country.

South Korea will also come up with legal efforts to improve North Korean human rights, he said, referring to the efforts, led by the ruling Saenuri Party, to enact a law for North Korean human rights.

The call by the minister came amid nagging inter-Korean tensions, triggered after the North's long-range rocket launch in December and its third nuclear test on Feb. 12.

Further aggravating the tensions, the North shut down the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North's border town of Kaesong, seen as the last symbol of inter-Korean economic cooperation, last month.

Seoul offered to hold talks with the North over the suspended joint industrial venture twice last month, only to be rejected by the North.

Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-seok called the North's weekend launches "deplorable," demanding that the North "act responsibly." (Yonhap News)