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“Kim Jong Un’s announcement at the end of last year of an end to North Korea's reunification policy represents a seismic shift in the ground on which all our previous ecumenical efforts have been built,” said Prove. “This is a painful reality check given our previous aspirations.”
Prove went on to speak of the hope that churches offer through solidarity with and accompaniment of the relationship between Christians in South and North Korea, and support for their desire for peace and reconciliation in their region.
“In this new and acutely challenging geopolitical context, the role of the global ecumenical community must remain one of solidarity and accompaniment,” he said. “Further, in a context of escalating geopolitical tensions and re-armament in the region, the solidarity and accompaniment of the global fellowship of churches must be expressed in even more powerful and persistent advocacy for dialogue and for peace instead of military confrontation.”
Prove noted that efforts to prevent North Korea from gaining nuclear weapon capability obviously failed.
“It seems clear by now that North Korea will not unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons,” he said. “However, North Korea has given some signals of its openness to engaging in a process of multilateral nuclear disarmament such as that prescribed by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – the only nuclear-armed state to have done so.”
Prove urged members of the ecumenical movement concerned for peace and for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula to redouble their advocacy for more states to sign and ratify the treaty.
Prove added that the maximum pressure sanctions that failed to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons continue to be maintained, though they now serve little purpose other than to prosecute a kind of economic warfare against the North Korean people.
“From a humanitarian perspective, continued and strengthened advocacy by the international ecumenical community for the elimination or relaxation of these sanctions is sorely needed, and might also help serve the purpose of improving the political environment for dialogue for peaceful co-existence,” he said.
