South Korean president rules out any reward for summit with North Korea; last was 2007

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SKorea rules out any reward for summit with NKorea

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president Tuesday ruled out giving North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a reward for staging any future summit with Seoul.

President Lee Myung-bak recently raised the possibility of an inter-Korean summit sometime this year amid speculation that negotiations for meeting with Kim were under way.

The leaders of North and South Korea, which have remained in a state of war since 1953, have held two summits in Pyongyang over the past decade: in 2000 and 2007, before Lee took office in 2008.

Lee, who has taken a tougher approach toward Pyongyang than his liberal predecessors, told the BBC last week in Davos, Switzerland, that a meeting with Kim “could probably” take place within the year. But he said Tuesday that North Korea would not be rewarded for agreeing to such a meeting.

“The leaders of South and North Korea should meet on the premise that there will be no price for a summit,” he said in a Cabinet meeting, according to his office.

The South Korean government allegedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars to North Korea in 2000 to help arrange the summit between late President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Il.

South Korea’s top official in charge of North Korea said a summit would help settle the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, as well as South Korean concerns about prisoners of war and abductees believed held in the North.

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said it was hard to say when such a summit would take place.

Officials from South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Russia and China have been working to get North Korea back to nuclear disarmament talks after Pyongyang walked away from the negotiations last year.

Lee’s comments came amid signs of renewed tension between the two Koreas.

Last week, North Korea lobbed dozens of shells toward the poorly marked maritime border with South Korea, prompting South Korea to respond with a barrage of warning shots. Pyongyang called it a military exercise, and South Korean officials reported no casualties or damage.

Despite the flare-up, officials from the two Koreas met Monday at the North Korean border town of Kaesong to discuss their joint factory park. Talks ended without any significant progress.