National News

S. Korea's new leader inaugurated as Pyongyang test-fires missile

South Korea's new president, Roh Moo Hyun, warned North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons drive in his inauguration speech in Seoul on Feb. 25 as Pyongyang marked the occasion by test-firing a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan.

"The suspicion that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons poses a grave threat to world peace," said the 56-year-old president, hours after Pyongyang's missile launch put South Korea's armed forces on alert and alarmed neighboring Japan.

The test was viewed as another calculated provocation from Pyongyang. It was the latest in a string of incidents involving North Korea that have raised tension in the 4-month-old crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

"It is up to Pyongyang whether to go ahead and obtain nuclear weapons or to get guarantees for the security of its regime and international economic support," said Roh, adding that his top priority was to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Roh said that North Korea, a financially bankrupt Stalinist state dubbed an "outlaw" nation and part of an "axis of evil" by U.S. President George W. Bush, should be treated as a partner, not as a criminal.

The following day, South Korea's opposition-dominated Parliament approved Roh's candidate for prime minister, former Seoul mayor and veteran bureaucrat Goh Kun. Goh's anticorruption record at city hall earned him the nickname "Mr. Clean."

Shukan ST: March 7, 2003

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