People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo said Sunday that President Lee Jae Myung's proposal to discuss ending the Korean War amounted to recognizing North Korea's nuclear arsenal, arguing that "an end of war without denuclearization is simply 'accepting North Korea's nuclear weapons.'"
In a Facebook post titled "What President Lee Jae Myung should be saying is a nuclear-dominant doctrine," Ahn said, "If our government officially recognizes North Korea's nuclear weapons, we must naturally possess nuclear weapons ourselves."
Ahn said Kim Jong-un must understand that "even touching the nuclear button could turn Pyongyang into a sea of fire," adding that "deterrence comes not from goodwill but from fear."
He argued that as long as North Korea alone holds nuclear weapons, Pyongyang will not abandon its hostile posture no matter how conciliatory Seoul's approach may be — a fact, he said, "already proven during the tenures of multiple presidents."
Ahn went on to say that North Korea's nuclear program, which began under President Kim Dae-jung and was completed under President Moon Jae-in, "has now reached an uncontrollable level." "What we need now is a nuclear doctrine, a nuclear armament project," he said. "What President Lee is building is not an 'irreplaceable Republic of Korea' but a 'Republic of Korea without a plan.'"
President Lee, speaking Saturday at the 81st Liberation Day ceremony at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Jongno-gu, Seoul, proposed that North Korea "set aside mutual threats and begin talks among the parties to end a very old war." He pledged to "embark on a journey to end the war and transform the Korean Peninsula's unstable armistice regime into a peace regime."
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