1. Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yul attended and delivered a keynote speech at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament (CD) on March 4. In his keynote speech, he spoke about ways to revitalize the CD mechanism and the position of the government of the Republic of Korea on issues regarding international disarmament and non-proliferation, including the North Korean nuclear issue.

2. Vice Minister Cho called for the revitalization of the CD mechanism, which has long remained deadlocked and thereby seen its status weakened in international discussions on disarmament and non-proliferation. As a way to break the deadlock of the CD mechanism, he proposed resuming as soon as possible negotiations on the Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), one of the main agenda items of the CD.

◦ The Vice Minister pointed out that the progress in the FMCT discussions will help make a success of the Review Conference of the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) set for April 2015 and help promote the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation as well as the nuclear security regime.

3. With regard to the North Korean nuclear issue, Vice Minister Cho stressed that the complete resolution of the issue is important not only for the maintenance of peace and security in Northeast Asia, but also for the credibility of the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime. He explained the ROK government’s efforts for a complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization through dialogue and negotiations, based on close cooperation with the participating states in the Six-Party Talks as well as the international community, urging North Korea to make a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear programs.

◦ The Vice Minister, stressing that the international community has been clear and consistent in its position that North Korea must abandon its nuclear program and cannot have the status of a nuclear-weapon state, called on North Korea to promptly return to meaningful negotiations on denuclearization with a sincere attitude in response to the repeated calls from the international community.

◦ In response to the address by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong at the CD on March 3, the Vice Minister, citing a legal maxim ex injuria jus non oritur (unjust acts cannot create laws), emphasized that the international community will never grant the status of a nuclear-weapon state to North Korea known for the most blatant case of nuclear proliferation.

◦ In response to North Korean Foreign Minister Ri calling the ROK-US joint military exercises a rehearsal for a nuclear war, the Vice Minister mentioned that it is not without a certain sense of irony that a state posing a clear and existing nuclear threat calls an annual defensive exercise a “nuclear war exercise” against itself.

◦ The Vice Minister, bringing renewed attention to the fact that North Korea had made short-lived but strategic decisions twice in the past with an interval of twenty years -- the first in the 1970s and the second in the 1990s, stressed that now, some twenty years after the end of the Cold War and another time of tectonic shift in regional geopolitics, is time for North Korea to make another strategic decision, difficult as it may be.

4. Concluding his speech, Vice Minister Cho appealed to the CD member states, which have the swords and spears to beat into plowshares and pruning hooks, to break the current deadlock of the CD mechanism and resume substantive discussions and thereby prove that peace will never be achieved through clash of arms. By presenting ways to intensify discussions on disarmament at the world’s sole multilateral disarmament negotiation forum and explaining the ROK government’s consistent position on the denuclearization of North Korea, the Vice Minister is seen to have drawn a positive response from other CD member states. 


               Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of MOFA

* unofficial translation