Lee Jae Myung stresses peace on peninsula ahead of Korean War anniversary
President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday, the day before the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War, that national security could only be guaranteed when South Korea achieves peace on the peninsula.
"When we think about the concept of national security, people tend to think that achieving it through a victory in a battle is important. But what's more important is that we win without a fight," Lee said at a Cabinet meeting he presided over at his office Tuesday.
"National security will certainly be guaranteed in a situation when there is no need to fight, in other words, when peace prevails, and politics has a role to play in building peace," added the liberal president.
Lee's remarks came a day before South Korea was to celebrate the anniversary of the Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950 following North Korea's invasion of South Korea.
As the United Nations forces and the communist forces signed a ceasefire agreement on July 27, 1953, after about two years of negotiations, the two Koreas are still technically at war to this day. The tragic war has left behind about 1 million South Korean civilian casualties, while over 160,000 South Korean soldiers were either killed or missing.
Lee, who assumed the presidency on June 4, is widely expected to make efforts at inter-Korean detente and resume Seoul's engagement with Pyongyang, like his liberal predecessors like Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in did.
Lee's disgraced conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol tended to take a hard-line stance against North Korea's provocations, and accused Pyongyang of heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang also amended its stance, calling South Korea a "hostile state," suspending inter-Korean military pact signed in 2018, destroying inter-Korean roads and railways and resuming propaganda broadcasts, among other things.
Soon after his inauguration, Lee ordered a halt to South Korea's propaganda loudspeaker operation along the inter-Korean border.
During the Cabinet meeting, Lee also pledged to compensate those who "made an extraordinary sacrifice" for their country.
"At a moment when fighting against (enemies) is inevitable, it is mostly the helpless ordinary citizens who are at the front line. There are many instances when ordinary people sacrificed themselves in a fight to defend their communities," Lee said.
He continued, "Come to think of this, I don't believe those who made an extraordinary sacrifice for their communities were rewarded correspondingly by the groups they belonged to," Lee said.
This is aligned with Lee's speech to commemorate the Memorial Day on June 6. During that speech, delivered to an audience that included the bereaved families of Navy officers and commissioned officers who perished in a maritime patrol aircraft crash in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province in May, and a firefighter who was killed during a massive fire in a tangerine warehouse in Jeju Island in 2023, Lee said, 'Extraordinary sacrifices made for the good of all deserve to be met with extraordinary rewards.'
Also at the Cabinet meeting, Lee urged civil servants to shield the marginalized from external crises that stem from a recent conflict in the Middle East.
"The entire world, including South Korea, is now in big trouble," Lee said. "A crisis inflicts a greater amount of pain to the people who are poor and helpless. As we discuss the measures to counter the consumer price hike and stabilize the cost of living, I hope the meeting could serve as an opportunity to minimize the damage to the marginalized with extra care."
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