An employee walks pass a sign indicating the Ministry of Unification's office at Government Complex Seoul in Jongno District, July 28, 2023. Yonhap

An institute affiliated with the unification ministry published new unification education guidebooks Monday that highlight the Yoon Suk Yeol government's liberal democracy-based unification vision and North Korea's increased threats against South Korea.

The National Institute for Unification Education released two books used as the basic guidelines for unification education. Since 2000, the institute has annually published such guidebooks to help people better understand the government's unification vision and North Korea's situations.

This year's guidebooks laid out the Yoon government's policy on unification and North Korea, including efforts to craft a new unification vision based on the principle of liberal democracy.

In particular, they omitted details about the 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement that was fully suspended by the government in June in response to North Korea's massive sending of trash-carrying balloons into South Korea.

The accord, signed under the former liberal Moon Jae-in government, calls for setting up buffer zones along land and maritime borders, and creating no-fly zones along the border in a bid to prevent accidental clashes.

At a year-end party meeting in December, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other" and said there is no point of seeking reconciliation and unification with South Korea. (Yonhap)