Former South Korean President Criticizes U.S. Financial Sanctions Against North Korea

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung has questioned the motives for U.S. allegations of North Korean financial crimes, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 31).

“I don’t know whether it was just a coincidence or a backlash from the hawks in the United States that Washington came up with the issue of counterfeiting as if it wanted to pour cold water on the talks, immediately after considerable progress was made,” Kim said in an interview published today in the Segye Daily.

Kim also said he planned to travel to Pyongyang in April and anticipated the topic of multilateral nuclear disarmament talks would come up when he meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

“I am not a government envoy so I am not in a position to make some kind of progress in the six-party talks. I am only thinking that I must do what I can as a person who wishes for peace on the Korean Peninsula,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 1).

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