27 June 2016•Update: 29 June 2016
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
South Korea's president has urged her country to "ward off those who are sowing division... and siding with North Korea".
Park Geun-hye's public statement Monday came less than a week after the North drew a statement of condemnation from the United Nations Security Council for its latest pair of ballistic missile tests -- whereby Pyongyang was hit with strengthened UN sanctions earlier this year following its fourth ever nuclear test.
But Park's insistence on unity also arrived amid ongoing efforts by a group of local lawyers to check North Korea's claim that Seoul was behind the kidnapping of a group of defectors in April.
"When a country faces a national crisis, the most frightening issue is internal division and apathy," Park insisted.
South Koreans can land in trouble for merely praising Pyongyang under the nation's strict security law.
Standing opposed to North Korea can still be a divided business in the South, where left-leaning parties are generally distinguished by their desire for Seoul-Pyongyang talks.
A spokesperson for South Korea's opposition Minjoo Party of Korea echoed its repeated call for dialogue last Saturday, which marked the 66th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
The conflict ended in a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty.
The main rival parties agree on the need for a strong security stance, but the government made clear Monday that now is not the time to risk meddling with the impact of global sanctions.
"The current situation is at a very critical moment that will determine whether it is possible to prevent the North from developing nuclear weapons or not," the unification ministry said in a parliamentary report carried by local news agency Yonhap.
North Korea has remained defiant in its self-described status as a "responsible nuclear weapons state," as further evidenced by Pyongyang's open rejection of last week's UN statement.
