South Korea will offer North Korea major aid plan in

South Korea will offer North Korea major aid plan in exchange for its denuclearization

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol had already mentioned this plan in his inaugural speech. But Pyongyang has long rejected similar proposals.

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Posted on 08/15/2022 18:41 Updated on 08/15/2022 19:07

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Will this plan be more successful than its predecessors? South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has announced that he will offer North Korea a major economic aid package “essential” to achieving lasting peace on the peninsula in exchange for denuclearizing its arsenal, Monday 15 August.

Yoon Suk-yeol said the plan would include food, energy and help to upgrade infrastructure such as ports, airports and hospitals. This plan “will gradually improve North Korea’s economy and the living standards of its people significantly when the North stops developing its nuclear program and embarks on a real and substantial process of denuclearization,” the South Korean leader assured during a speech marking the anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

This announcement comes in a tense context: North Korea conducted a record number of weapons tests this year and launched a full-range ICBM for the first time since 2017. August, in a speech celebrating the country’s “brilliant victory” against Covid-19.

For experts in the region, the chances of North Korea accepting this offer, already mentioned in Yoon Suk-yeol’s inaugural speech, are very slim. North Korea, which invests a large part of its GDP in its arms program, has long maintained that it is not interested in such a deal.