WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia called for the bilateral talks in a November 12 letter addressed to the governments of North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States.
Kobia said he was alarmed and disappointed at the “breakdown of the Six-Party Talks,” which has “led to actions that escalate tensions and confrontations.”
A multilateral framework launched by those governments in 2003 to address the North Korean nuclear program, the Six-Party Talks stalled at the beginning of 2009, when North Korea launched a “test” rocket, earning criticism from the other parties to the talks. Further North Korean nuclear testing contributed to the stalemate.
United Nations’ sanctions against North Korea were intensified in June after it conducted an underground nuclear test in violation of international treaties.
“We urge each of you to return to the negotiating table prepared to deal with the difficult but eminently solvable issues before you”, Kobia wrote, saying that “negotiations, which could build a lasting peace in the Korean peninsula, are within your governments’ power.”
As “an incentive for progress” and “an essential part of multilateral success,” Kobia called for “direct talks between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” in the context of the Six-Party Talks.
On October 21 Kobia, supported by the general secretary of the Christian
Conference of Asia, Prawate Khid-arn, told Ecumenical News International he was urging the international community to lift economic sanctions against North Korea. This followed their first visit to the communist-ruled country, where they prayed in a state-sanctioned church in the North Korean capital.
That visit was criticized by the Washington-based conservative think tank, the Institute of Religion and Democracy, whose president, Mark Tooley, wrote in a commentary, “Seemingly, groups like the WCC only worry about nukes if they belong to the U.S.”
Tooley added, “If Kobia had any thoughts on how North Korea’s monstrous regime likes to incarcerate, torture, and kill its Christians, the WCC did not report it. Evidently, Kobia was received warmly by the North Korean tyranny, which predictably showed him the handful of government-run puppet church congregations in Pyongyang.”
In his November 12 letter, Kobia wrote that negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear program cannot ignore the fact that “five of the six parties are recognized nuclear-weapon-States or are protected by such States.” Therefore, “steps toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would greatly facilitate progress in the Six-Party Talks.”
The WCC general secretary suggested taking “bold and concrete steps towards a nuclear-weapon-free Korean peninsula and ultimately a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Northeast Asia.” “It is time to make the Korean peninsula a setting for successful disarmament rather than a focus of regional instability and international failure,” Kobia stated.
In a press release the WCC noted that its member churches have pursued peace and reconciliation in the Korean peninsula for several decades. It added that in October, at an international consultation held in Hong Kong, 140 church representatives from more than 30 countries supported the Korean reunification.
The Korean peninsula has been divided since 1950 when South Korea and a U.S.-led United Nations force fought against North Koreans backed by Chinese ground troops and aided by the Soviet Union. Hostilities came to a halt in an armistice signed at Panmunjom on July 27, 1953, but a formal ceasefire has yet to be signed.
Full text of WCC letter
