South Korea is not considering easing or lifting sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after the sinking of one of the South's warships in 2010 that effectively put the kibosh on most cross-border exchanges, official sources said Friday.
Seoul announced the so-called May 24 measures after a two-month-long probe that accused Pyongyang of sinking the Cheonan in waters near the maritime border in the Yellow Sea on March 26, 2010. Pyongyang has denied the accusations.
Government insiders said that since the North instigated the provocation that left 46 sailors dead, it is responsible for coming up with measures that will prevent a repeat of such an attack.
"Any action taken by the communist country must be on the scale that can be accepted by the South Korean public," an official said on condition of anonymity.
Seoul's stance comes as inter-Korean relations took a turn for the worse after North Korea pulled out all of its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong Industrial Complex that has resulted in the temporary shutdown of the cooperative venture in the North, with tensions being sparked further by the North detonating its third nuclear device in February.
Under the sanctions, Seoul banned all North Korean ships from entering South Korean waters, halted all cross-border trade, and barred visits by South Korean nationals to the North. The restrictions also stopped new investments and assistance programs with the North. However, it did not call for the pull out of the Kaesong complex.
Inter-Korean relations have soured since the Cheonan's sinking and the North's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November of the same year, which left another four people dead.
The suspension of the Kaesong factory park, which accounted for over 99 percent of South-North trade, has caused economic cooperation to drop to the mid-1990s level.
Related to the Park Geun-hye administration's "hard line" position on sanctions, political analysts said that initially there were signs the new president may have considered easing sanctions in an attempt to build trust between the two countries.
North Korea, meanwhile, attacked the Park administration for maintaining sanctions and other confrontational policies imposed by the previous government.
State media outlets such as the Korean Central Television and Radio Pyongyang accused Seoul of not only sticking to anti-DPRK measures introduced by the Lee Myung-bak government, but actually becoming more vicious in its posture.
The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
The two broadcasters also said that while there have been calls within South Korea for the lifting of sanctions, the incumbent government, citing the need for the North to formally apologize for the sinking, rejected such moves. They said this showed the true "confrontational nature" of the Park administration. (Yonhap News)
