The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Loved and loathed, Park talks tough after Korea poll win
- Loved and loathed, Park talks tough after Korea poll win
- White House readies gun-control plan as more children laid to rest
| Loved and loathed, Park talks tough after Korea poll win Posted: 19 Dec 2012 08:37 PM PST SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's President-elect, Park Geun-hye, used her first major speech on Thursday to warn of the risks posed by a hostile North Korea and also fired a political shot across the bows of Japan's incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Speaking after a visit to the country's national cemetery, which included a poignant homage at the graves of her assassinated father and mother, South Korea's first female leader pledged to spread wealth more evenly. Park has said she will hold talks with North Korea and resume aid to the isolated and belligerent country, but only if it abandons its nuclear weapons programme. The impoverished North launched a rocket last week that critics said was a test for technology that could be used for a long-range missile that could one day carry a nuclear warhead. "North Korea's long-range missile launch showed how grave the security reality is that we are faced with," Park told a news conference a day after her convincing election win. Park will take office in February and signalled she would continue outgoing Lee Myung-bak's tough line on territorial claims that Japan has on South Korea. The relationship between them, the two closest allies of the United States in the region, has been damaged by an island row and the issue of an apology and compensation from Japan for the forced sexual slavery of Korean women in World War Two. South Korea says Japan, which has similar disputes with China, has not come to terms with its harsh past rule of Korea. Japan says it has paid compensation for the slavery issue and has apologised. "I will try to work for greater reconciliation, cooperation and peace in North East Asia based on correct perception of history," she said in an apparent reference to the simmering conflict with Tokyo. Park, 60, replaces fellow conservative Lee after his mandatory single, five-year term ends. The slightly built and elegant Park grew up in Seoul's presidential palace during the 18-year rule of her father, Park Chung-hee, who took power in a military coup in 1961. "TREMENDOUS BURDEN" Park on Tuesday called for national "reconciliation" in South Korea and pledged again to share wealth more evenly, but offered no clues about how she would implement policies. She is likely to face protests by South Korea's vocal left, angry over the rise to power of the daughter of a man they believe was a repressive "dictator". "This will be a tremendous burden on her ability to govern," political commentator Yu Chang-seon said of Park's heritage. "It effectively means that she could be in direct conflict with half of society ... The first six months will be key." On the economy, which dominated the election campaign, Park has promised more social welfare but given few specifics. Korea has achieved astonishing success in rising from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War to become the world's 14th largest economy, but rewards have been thinly spread. Economic growth was 5.5 percent for decades, driven by some of the world's biggest companies, such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Hyundai Motor Co. That pace has slowed and this year the economy will expand by about 2 percent. The hundreds of thousands of graduates churned out by South Korean universities each year complain they have trouble finding decent jobs and income differentials have widened sharply. Park has at times invoked her father's legacy of rapid growth that propelled South Korea into the league of industrialised nations. At other times, she has apologised for his suppression of protests and the execution of people suspected of sympathising with the North, which is still technically at war with the South after an armistice ended the Korean War. "FIRST LADY" Families of those who were executed under her father's rule believe Park has not apologised enough and that she has sought to sweep her past under the carpet. Park was her father's "First Lady" following the 1974 assassination of her mother up until her father was also shot and killed in 1979. The most notorious executions under Park Chung-hee's rule were of eight men dubbed the "People's Revolutionary Party". They were hanged 24 hours after being sentenced for treason. The eight, aged 30 to 52, represented a broad section of South Korean society, comprising a bee keeper, a brewery owner, an acupuncturist and teachers. They were exonerated posthumously by the Supreme Court in 2007. "What she needs to be doing is to reach out to everyone, to those who oppose her, to show her interest and offer her sympathy and to say that she feels sorry for what happened," said Reverend Park Jung-il, who was chief army chaplain in April 1975 and witnessed the dawn executions of the eight men. As well as confronting a domestic legacy that is still painful for many South Koreans, Park will have to deal with Kim Jong-un, the 29-year-old ruler of North Korea whose grandfather ordered several assassination attempts on her father. During a 2002 thaw in relations, Park met Kim Jong-il, the father of the latest Kim to rule the North, which in 2010 sank a South Korean naval vessel and shelled a South Korean island. Park has said she will seek to improve ties with Pyongyang. Lee, the outgoing president, infuriated the North by cutting off aid to a country where a third of the population is said by the United Nations to be malnourished. On the face of it, North Korea is in no mood for compromise. It has declared it will not ditch its nuclear weapons capacity, which it recently termed "treasured". It pushed ahead with last week's rocket launch, despite it being banned under U.N. resolutions imposed in the wake of its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests, as the South got ready to vote. Park herself has become a target for Pyongyang's propaganda machine, which has denounced Lee's five-year rule for bringing "nightmare, despair, (and )catastrophe". (Editing by Dean Yates and Paul Tait) Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| Loved and loathed, Park talks tough after Korea poll win Posted: 19 Dec 2012 07:15 PM PST SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's President-elect, Park Geun-hye, used her first major speech on Thursday to warn of the risks posed by a hostile North Korea and also fired a political shot across the bows of Japan's incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Speaking after a visit to the country's national cemetery, which included a poignant homage at the graves of her assassinated father and mother, South Korea's first female leader pledged to spread wealth more evenly. Park has said she will hold talks with North Korea and resume aid to the isolated and belligerent country, but only if it abandons its nuclear weapons programme. The impoverished North launched a rocket last week that critics said was a test for technology that could be used for a long-range missile that could one day carry a nuclear warhead. "North Korea's long-range missile launch showed how grave the security reality is that we are faced with," Park told a news conference a day after her convincing election win. Park will take office in February and signalled she would continue outgoing Lee Myung-bak's tough line on territorial claims that Japan has on South Korea. The relationship between them, the two closest allies of the United States in the region, has been damaged by an island row and the issue of an apology and compensation from Japan for the forced sexual slavery of Korean women in World War Two. South Korea says Japan, which has similar disputes with China, has not come to terms with its harsh past rule of Korea. Japan says it has paid compensation for the slavery issue and has apologised. "I will try to work for greater reconciliation, cooperation and peace in North East Asia based on correct perception of history," she said in an apparent reference to the simmering conflict with Tokyo. Park, 60, replaces fellow conservative Lee after his mandatory single, five-year term ends. The slightly built and elegant Park grew up in Seoul's presidential palace during the 18-year rule of her father, Park Chung-hee, who took power in a military coup in 1961. "TREMENDOUS BURDEN" Park on Tuesday called for national "reconciliation" in South Korea and pledged again to share wealth more evenly, but offered no clues about how she would implement policies. She is likely to face protests by South Korea's vocal left, angry over the rise to power of the daughter of a man they believe was a repressive "dictator". "This will be a tremendous burden on her ability to govern," political commentator Yu Chang-seon said of Park's heritage. "It effectively means that she could be in direct conflict with half of society ... The first six months will be key." On the economy, which dominated the election campaign, Park has promised more social welfare but given few specifics. Korea has achieved astonishing success in rising from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War to become the world's 14th largest economy, but rewards have been thinly spread. Economic growth was 5.5 percent for decades, driven by some of the world's biggest companies, such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Hyundai Motor Co. That pace has slowed and this year the economy will expand by about 2 percent. The hundreds of thousands of graduates churned out by South Korean universities each year complain they have trouble finding decent jobs and income differentials have widened sharply. Park has at times invoked her father's legacy of rapid growth that propelled South Korea into the league of industrialised nations. At other times, she has apologised for his suppression of protests and the execution of people suspected of sympathising with the North, which is still technically at war with the South after an armistice ended the Korean War. "FIRST LADY" Families of those who were executed under her father's rule believe Park has not apologised enough and that she has sought to sweep her past under the carpet. Park was her father's "First Lady" following the 1974 assassination of her mother up until her father was also shot and killed in 1979. The most notorious executions under Park Chung-hee's rule were of eight men dubbed the "People's Revolutionary Party". They were hanged 24 hours after being sentenced for treason. The eight, aged 30 to 52, represented a broad section of South Korean society, comprising a bee keeper, a brewery owner, an acupuncturist and teachers. They were exonerated posthumously by the Supreme Court in 2007. "What she needs to be doing is to reach out to everyone, to those who oppose her, to show her interest and offer her sympathy and to say that she feels sorry for what happened," said Reverend Park Jung-il, who was chief army chaplain in April 1975 and witnessed the dawn executions of the eight men. As well as confronting a domestic legacy that is still painful for many South Koreans, Park will have to deal with Kim Jong-un, the 29-year-old ruler of North Korea whose grandfather ordered several assassination attempts on her father. During a 2002 thaw in relations, Park met Kim Jong-il, the father of the latest Kim to rule the North, which in 2010 sank a South Korean naval vessel and shelled a South Korean island. Park has said she will seek to improve ties with Pyongyang. Lee, the outgoing president, infuriated the North by cutting off aid to a country where a third of the population is said by the United Nations to be malnourished. On the face of it, North Korea is in no mood for compromise. It has declared it will not ditch its nuclear weapons capacity, which it recently termed "treasured". It pushed ahead with last week's rocket launch, despite it being banned under U.N. resolutions imposed in the wake of its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests, as the South got ready to vote. Park herself has become a target for Pyongyang's propaganda machine, which has denounced Lee's five-year rule for bringing "nightmare, despair, (and )catastrophe". (Editing by Dean Yates and Paul Tait) Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| White House readies gun-control plan as more children laid to rest Posted: 19 Dec 2012 07:09 PM PST NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - President Barack Obama assigned Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday to find ways to curtail gun violence in America and try to avoid tragedies like the elementary school massacre in Connecticut, where the town buried one of its heroes on Wednesday.
With Newtown still in mourning from last Friday's shooting, when a 20-year-old gunman shot dead 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School and then himself, Biden took the assignment to produce recommendations and report back to Obama in time for the president's State of the Union address in late January. Obama's initiative addressed national outrage over the shootings in Connecticut, which have prompted long-time gun-rights supporters to reconsider their positions and a major private equity firm to put its gun-making business up for sale. Funerals or wakes were held for four of Newtown's children on Wednesday, as well as the school principal. Teacher Victoria Soto, who is credited with saving half her class of 6- and 7-year-olds by diverting the shooter and hiding the children in a closet, was also laid to rest. "Vicki achieved in her 27 years what many of us will never achieve if we live to be a hundred," the Reverend Meg Boxwell Williams told the funeral service. "Her last act was absolutely selfless, Christ-like, laying down her life for her children." Gunman Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother at home and then killed 20 children and six adults at the school before shooting himself in the head, officials said. Soto hid her students in a closet when she heard the shooting start early Friday morning, and when Lanza entered Soto's classroom she tried to throw him off by telling him the students were at the other end of the school in an auditorium, the Hartford Courant reported, citing unnamed law-enforcement officials. Lanza shot six of the children when they tried to run, and police later found the remaining seven students still hiding in the closet, the Courant said. Those children told law enforcement officials what had happened, the Courant reported. The account provided Newtown with a positive story to cling to following the horrible events that left the nation stunned. Soto's death "mixed with the glad knowledge that her sacrifice saved so many children," Williams said. MOURNERS LINE THE STREETS Some 30 police motorcycles from surrounding towns led the hearse carrying Soto's body to the service in Stratford, Connecticut. About 200 mourners lined the streets outside the church, including a mother and daughter from Maryland who never met Soto but made the long drive because they were touched by her bravery in trying to protect the children in her class. The family of the school's slain principal, Dawn Hochsprung, invited mourners to visit a local funeral home on Wednesday. Her burial was due to be private at an undisclosed time. Hundreds braved a bitter wind to pay their respects to the fallen principal, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After the service for Daniel Barden, 7, a bagpiper played "America the Beautiful," as hundreds of police officers and fire-fighters, some from New York City and distant towns, stood in formation outside. The little boy loved his family, riding waves at the beach, playing drums, foosball, reading and making s'mores around a bonfire at his grandfather's house, said an obituary in the Newtown Bee newspaper. Funerals were also held for Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi, both 6, and a wake for Chase Kowalski, 7. The massacre prompted some Republican lawmakers to open the door to a national debate about gun control. That may give an opening to Obama, who said he hoped the National Rifle Association gun lobby would reflect on the tragedy as it awaits Biden's recommendations. "The vast majority of responsible law-abiding gun owners would be some of the first to say that we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few from buying a weapon of war," Obama said. Connecticut's U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator-elect Chris Murphy met on Wednesday evening with a group of about 40 Newtown residents who are pushing for strengthened gun control and calling themselves Newtown United. Blumenthal said, as he asks people in town if there is anything he can do, they tell him: "Yes. Do something about guns." (Additional reporting by Edith Honan and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Barbara Goldberg and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Todd Eastham)
Copyright © 2012 Reuters |
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