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By Choi Sung-jin
North Korea's attempted interference with the internal affairs of South Korea with respect to the glaring scandal involving the South's top leader has exceeded a tolerable level, experts said here Saturday.
The Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the North's ruling Workers Party, reported in great detail about the scandal Thursday, such as the leakage of state documents to Choi Soon-sil, a long-term confidant of President Park Geun-hye, as well as the South's political and social circumstances, and said, "Park's governance crisis has reached the worst situation."
"The (Park) regime has all but collapsed," it said while making an unwarranted call for the cabinet's resignation en masse.
The reclusive regime has moved beyond the simple intervention in the South's internal affairs. It is seeking to foment a South-South schism and instigate an outright anti-government protest.
For instance, Pyongyang's propaganda machine has attempted to meddle in the so-called "memoir controversy" sparked by former Foreign Minister Song Min-soon who said Moon Jae-in, who was President Park's opponent in the 2012 election and a most probable candidate next year, sought to earn Pyongyang's view in deciding what to do with the U.N. vote on the North's abuse of human rights, when Moon was President Roh Moo-hyun's chief of staff in 2007.
In response to the controversy, North Korea said recently, "South Korea neither asked about our opinion nor sent its intention to abstain from voting," in an apparent attempt to help the beleaguered opposition politician.
Pyongyang's unsought-for helping hand, however, was brushed away by Moon himself. "Who among us asked you about this? It's completely up to the South," he said. "You should never dream of meddling in our politics in any way."
The North's recent series of moves seems aimed at weakening Seoul's policy to step up sanctions on the isolated regime and is seeking to cement its internal unity, the experts said.
"The recent attempts of North Korea to interfere with the South's internal affairs are quite unusual," said Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies. "They appear to want to emphasize the superiority of the socialist system at a time when the two Koreas confront each other tensely."
Others stressed the need to remind Pyongyang of the reality that the North's propaganda offensive would backfire.
"North Korea should realize that the higher it raises its anti-South voices, the weaker the positions of the South Korean doves become and the worse its image gets among the South Korean people," said Chang Yong-seok, a researcher at the Institute of Unification and Peace at Seoul National University.
