Will North Korea's killing of a South Korean civilian eclipse Moon's dream of a united peninsula?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in this week used a speech to the United Nations to call for international support to formally end the Korean war, and bring denuclearisation as well as "lasting peace" to the peninsula. But barely more than 24 hours later, his latest overture was in tatters after South Korean authorities said a missing fisheries official had been shot to death by soldiers from North Korea.

The 47-year-old official was killed and then set alight in a "brutal act" at sea on Tuesday after leaving his patrol boat and attempting to defect to the North, the South Korean Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Thursday.

The incident marked the first killing of a South Korean civilian in the North since 2008, when a North Korean soldier fatally shot a tourist who wandered into a restricted area near the Mount Kumgang resort.

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Moon, whose Wednesday speech to the UN drew silence from North Korea, the United States, and China - the parties capable of putting in place a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean war - said the killing was "shocking" and could not be tolerated.

After staking his legacy on a policy of inter-Korean reconciliation that has made little headway since a flurry of summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2018, Moon faces public outrage and acrimony toward the North as the latest obstacles to his vision of a reunified Korea.

"President Moon's call for an end-of-war declaration at the UN has become an international laughing stock," said Hong Deuk-pyo, a professor emeritus of political science at Inha University.

"This case makes it clear to see how empty the Moon administration's one-sided wooing of the North has been, and it exposes how North Korea looks down on and doesn't give a damn about South Korea. We can expect South Koreans to be furious and their hostility toward the Moon administration's policy of reconciliation and cooperation with the North to grow."

South Koreans' views towards their neighbour, which has been ruled by three generations of Kims since the division of the peninsula shortly after World War II, have in the past hardened following clashes involving the loss of life. After Pyongyang shelled the South Korean border island Yeongpyeong in November 2010 - killing four, including two civilians - 57 per cent of the public expressed support for abolishing or cutting aid to the North, compared with fewer than 32 per cent in January that year, according to an East Asia Institute and Hankook Research poll.

In the same poll, more than two-thirds of respondents said they favoured limited military action over the Yeongpyeong incident, more than double the proportion who favoured a military response following the earlier sinking of a South Korean warship that was blamed on the North.

"South Korean public attitudes towards North Korea are not ideological," said Karl Friedhoff, a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs who studies public opinion in South Korea. "They are pragmatic. And this gives South Korean leaders wide leeway on how they handle that relationship. But those attitudes can shift quickly."

Friedhoff, who was previously affiliated with the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said the latest incident was likely to push the South Korean public towards a "much harder-line policy even though the default is a preference for engagement as long as North Korea is behaving".

"It will, I think, be very difficult for Moon to continue to pursue rapprochement in the short term," he said.

South Koreans watch a news programme showing an image of Moon and Kim on September 25. Photo: AP alt=South Koreans watch a news programme showing an image of Moon and Kim on September 25. Photo: AP

Moon, the son of North Korean refugees and heir to the pro-rapprochement "sunshine" policy of the late president Roh Moo-hyun, had already struggled to advance inter-Korean ties or the North's denuclearisation since his third summit with Kim in September 2018.

During that meeting, which followed US President Donald Trump's historic first summit with Kim in Singapore, Moon and Kim pledged to work towards "national reconciliation and cooperation, and firm peace and co-prosperity".

In June, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office, a key outcome of Moon's first summit with Kim, after expressing outrage over Seoul's failure to stop activists from flying anti-regime pamphlets across the heavily militarised border.

American efforts to engage the North have also gone nowhere since Trump walked out of his second summit with Kim in Hanoi last year, citing the North Korean leader's insistence on sweeping sanctions relief in exchange for piecemeal denuclearisation measures.

Addressing an Armed Forces Day ceremony on Friday, Moon vowed the country's military would respond "resolutely" to any threat to the public, while also repeatedly stressing the importance of peace, the state-funded Yonhap News Agency reported.

He made no reference to the North or the killing of the fisheries official, according to the agency.

South Korean Marines patrol on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea on September 24. Photo: AP alt=South Korean Marines patrol on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea on September 24. Photo: AP

On Friday afternoon, South Korea's Presidential Blue House said it had received a personal message from Kim stating he was "very sorry" over the "unsavoury" incident. The message also said the official had failed to respond to verbal inquiries and that only floating material - not his body, which was not located - had been burned to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Yonhap reported.

Blue House Director of National Security Suh Hoon said Kim and Moon had also exchanged letters within the past month, with the North Korean leader wishing South Koreans well as they dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic and damage from recent typhoons.

"Although the South Korean public is emotionally enraged by the event, the South Korean government will not change its conciliatory gestures toward North Korea," said Lim Jae-cheon, a North Korea studies professor at Korea University in Seoul. "The government will try to persuade the public not to completely turn hawkish. The North Korean official statement is also helpful for the government maintaining its gestures."

Nam Chang-hee, professor of international relations at Inha University, expressed doubt that Pyongyang had genuine interest in engaging Seoul following its "hostile act", and suggested its real focus was on Washington.

"It shows North Korea's lack of interest in the Moon administration's efforts at contact," Nam said. "Coming on top of Moon Jae-in's call for an end-of-war declaration at the UN, it's an opportunity for a dramatic realisation among South Koreans about the unreality of the Moon administration's appeasement policy and is even more embarrassing for the Blue House."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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