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| ▲ Unification Minister nominee Chung Dong-young speaks at a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly on July 14, 2025. (Yonhap) |
(LEAD) unification minister nominee-confirmation hearing
(LEAD) Unification minister nominee calls for restoring frayed inter-Korean ties
(ATTN: UPDATES with more details throughout)
SEOUL, July 14 (Yonhap) -- Unification Minister nominee Chung Dong-young on Monday raised the need to restore frayed relations between South and North Korea, and reestablish peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Chung made the remarks during a parliamentary confirmation hearing as President Lee Jae Myung has vowed to mend strained inter-Korean ties and seek dialogue with North Korea.
"(We) need to restore inter-Korean relations that remain in ruin and reestablish a peaceful coexistence system on the Korean Peninsula," Chung said at the start of the hearing.
Chung called for resuming reconciliation and cooperation efforts with North Korea and finding ways to faithfully implement agreements reached between the two Koreas.
Chung, a journalist-turned-lawmaker, was nominated last month as the first unification minister under the Lee Jae Myung administration. He previously serviced as unification minister in 2004-05 under former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun.
On North Korea defining inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other" in 2023, Chung said he thinks it was the North's response to the former South Korean government's hard-line stance against Pyongyang.
Calling the way that East and West Germany unified a "pragmatic" approach, the nominee assessed they pursued unification through exchanges and cooperation while effectively recognizing them as two separate states.
"What the Lee Jae Myung government needs to pursue is pragmatism," he said.
Chung said former liberal President Moon Jae-in's proposal in 2017 to suspend a joint military exercise with the United States helped resume inter-Korean dialogue on the occasion of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
"This is an issue that needs to be discussed at meetings of the National Security Council," Chung said.
The nominee also said he sees the need to change the name of the unification ministry by dropping the unification reference.
"This would be a very important issue to be discussed with the National Assembly," Chung said, suggesting that the Ministry of the Korean Peninsula could be one of the choices for the new name.
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