SEOUL, Dec 7, 2010 (AFP) - South Korea should prepare for reunification with North Korea, the minister for cross-border relations said Tuesday, calling Pyongyang's shelling attack the "worst choice" the North had ever made.
Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek said "this year will be remembered as a historic turning point in the Korean peninsula issue", without elaborating.
"Preparing for reunification has become the country's imminent task," Hyun told a seminar.
He called the attack on Yeonpyeong, which killed four people including two civilians, the "North Korean regime's worst choice" and said it would bring no benefits politically, economically or militarily.
The minister said the South in the past had focused on managing relations to keep the peace.
But now its people had started "looking squarely at the issue of North Korea beyond inter-Korean relations and seriously thinking about the future of the Korean peninsula".
US diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks quoted Hyun as telling US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on July 24 last year that although Kim Jong-Il remained firmly in control of the North's regime, he was unlikely to live beyond 2014.
"Unification was the goal of South Korea," Hyun was quoted as saying.
In another US cable, South Korea's then vice foreign minister Chun Yung-Woo told US ambassador Kathleen Stephens at a meeting on February 17 that North Korea had already collapsed economically and would collapse politically two to three years after Kim Jong-Il's death.
North Korea accuses the conservative government of President Lee Myung-Bak of pursuing reunification through absorption.
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