South Korea will continue to broaden national debate on ways to tackle the cost of reunifying itself with North Korea, a top presidential aide said Wednesday, despite Pyongyang's continuing allegations that Seoul is seeking to absorb the communist neighbor.
On Aug. 15, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed a "unification tax" that he said would help lessen the financial burden of uniting with North Korea if such a situation arises.
The proposal, made amid strained relations between the divided nations still technically at war, drew a harsh reaction from North Korea, which
accused Lee of hoping to topple Pyongyang by force.
Kim Sung-hwan, Lee's senior secretary for foreign affairs and security, denied that the proposed tax was meant to suggest unification by absorption or a radical contingency in the North, but insisted that the debate on financial costs must continue.
"The government will keep undergoing the process of publicizing (the issue of unification costs) to collect opinions and wisdom from various
sides of society," he said in a speech at a forum in Seoul. "Through this, we can find the right means of procuring the costs and the right vision of a unified future."
Kim said the discussions over the proposed unification tax would "not at all take certain situations in North Korea into account," arguing that the topics were "different in context."
The relations between South and North Korea, which fought the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce, remain at the lowest point in years after
Seoul announced in May that Pyongyang was to blame for the deadly sinking of its warship in the Yellow Sea.
The March 26 sinking claimed the lives of 46 sailors. The North denies any role, and has threatened to wage "strong physical retaliation" if South Korea takes punitive measures against it.
In the latest act of denunciation over the proposed unification tax, official Pyongyang Radio said Wednesday that Lee and his advisers should be "buried alive" for their policy that it said was "totally anti-unification and confrontational."
"The unification tax is a criminal war tax devised by the traitor group of Lee Myung-bak to realize the ambition of unification by absorption," it said.
Lee has linked his North Korea policy to progress in the communist state's efforts to denuclearize in the framework of multilateral talks, which have remained in limbo since late 2008.
The North says Lee is teaming up with hard-liners in Washington to bring down the regime in Pyongyang by disarmament.
The mistrust between the Koreas has halted nearly all inter-Korean reconciliation projects. The South says it will not consider restoring its
political and economic exchanges unless the North apologizes for the Cheonan sinking, while the North has declared the severance of all ties with the South.
Pyongyang also remains silent on the Seoul-based Red Cross's offer last week of massive relief supplies to help the North recover from recent floods that reportedly killed dozens of people and evacuated tens of thousands of
others. The North also continues to detain the crewmen of a South Korean fishing boat its navy captured off the eastern coast on Aug. 8.