Opposition party proposes parliamentary resolution to remove

A group of opposition lawmakers have proposed the ruling party join hands with it to push for a joint parliamentary resolution to lift Seoul's sanctions on North Korea imposed after its deadly sinking of a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, parliamentary sources said Sunday.

The proposal, made by the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy's Rep. Sim Jae-kwon and Kim Sung-gon, seeks to remove the May 24 sanctions that ban all inter-Korean trade and other exchanges.

The country imposed the punitive sanctions following the North's torpedoing of the Navy corvette Cheonan in March 2010. A total of 46 South Korean sailors were killed or went missing in the sinking.

The measure cut off virtually all inter-Korean trade, with Pyongyang repeatedly calling for the sanctions to be removed.

In the proposal, conveyed during the opposition lawmakers' trip with Rep. Kim Young-woo of the ruling Saenuri Party to Chinese and Russian border areas near North Korea earlier this week, they officially asked the ruling party to jointly push for the parliamentary proposal, according to the sources.

"The May 24 measures are increasingly putting more obstacles to improving inter-Korean relations, without having achieved their initial policy goal," a rough draft of the resolution written by the opposition party showed. "The removal of the sanctions would be the starting point for normalizing inter-Korean relations and would contribute to the joint prosperity of all Northeast Asian nations," it said.

But it remains unclear whether the resolution could pass through the parliament given a division among ruling party lawmakers over the push.

Saenuri Party Rep. Kim said, "It is still too early to shift the government's policy given that the North has not taken any actions to take responsibility for the sinking and the public is still angry with the incident."

Kim added he will still collect opinions from ruling party lawmakers regardless of his judgment. (Yonhap)