North Korea has been conducting lectures to
instill a sense of animosity among its people about South Korea’s Unification
Preparatory Committee launched under Seoul’s Park Geun Hye administration,
Daily NK has learned.
“There
was a lecture recently in which residents were taught that South Korea’s Unification Preparatory Committee needs to be destroyed since it was founded
under anti-Republic schemes, namely absorption of the North through unification,” a
source from North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK on Wednesday.
He added, “The lecturer emphasized that the committee is actually a
group made up of people against [peaceful] unification and that people should remain vigilant against the possibility of the South invading the North backed by the imperialist U.S.”
Pyongyang has also been referring to Seoul’s unification efforts as “acts of imperial
looting” as part tactics aimed at ensuring members of the public remain wary about the South suddenly
invading the North under the pretense of unification– just as Japanese imperial
forces did in the past.
“Since they were very young, people have
been taught repeatedly about the [Japanese] colonial period; this brainwashing has given them significant misgivings about such issues,” the source said, elaborating on the underlying strategies behind propagating the unification committee as an invasion plot to North Korean residents.
“Most people didn’t really know much about
it [the committee], but these lectures have piqued their interest,” he went on. However, he added that people seem to be far more interested in the fact that the South is doing something to prepare for unification rather than in the
content of the lecture itself.
Unsurprisingly, opinions on the ground are divided. He explained that some appear receptive to the idea that the country can become one again with the South; others, however, have displayed overtly emotional responses at the prospect of being stripped of the essence of their nation, according to the source.
Following these movements from the North,
some in Seoul argue the South needs to work to promote its unification strategy
with North Korean residents in mind.
“As
you can tell from Kim Jong Eun’s New Year’s Address this year, wherein he said
Seoul should stop pursuing an institutionalized method of unification that
widens the chasm between the North and South, Pyongyang is going to be all up
in arms about Seoul’s efforts toward unification,” a North Korean defector who previously held a high-ranking position in North Korea. “The best preparation for
unification would be to come up with a strategy that excludes the leadership
and bears in mind the residents of the North.”
