Unification Minister Lee In-young said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s apology over the killing of a South Korean official is “very rare.”
Lee shared his views on the matter on Friday while fielding questions from the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee.
Lee said to his knowledge, it is in fact the first time the North announced its apologetic stance over an inter-Korean incident so swiftly and said “sorry” twice.
The minister pointed to two previous occasions where the North's leaders apologized to the South. One was an apology by North Korean nation founder Kim Il-sung over a 1968 raid on Cheong Wa Dae by team of North Korean assassins and the other was an apology from his son and former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to ex-South Korean president Park Geun-hye over the same raid. Park visited the North in 2002 as a lawmaker before she became South Korea's president and the North Korean assassins who raided Cheong Wa Dae back in 1968 sought to kill her father, former president Park Chung-hee.
Unification Minister Lee assessed the North’s latest apology as a bid to prevent the incident from developing into an apocalyptic situation between the two Koreas.