Moon Jae-in’s government questioned for collaborating with enemies after outcry over proposed nuclear power plant for North Korea

The South Korean government was recently revealed by the media to have discussed the construction of nuclear power plants for North Korea, causing public outcry, and opposition parties questioned this as collusion with the enemy.

The report cited sources that the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources deleted 444 internal documents in December last year, including more than 10 reports for “promoting the construction of nuclear power plants in North Korea,” written in May 2018, the Time for President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after their meeting on April 27 of the same year. The reports said the reports showed the government based on the provision of electricity assistance to the DPRK as the basis for further discussions on the construction of nuclear power plants for the other side, with the South Korean side indicating at the time that there were no more new nuclear power plants in the country.

In addition, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources (MITR) formulated three proposals to assist the DPRK, namely to build a nuclear power plant at the light water reactor in Sinpo City, which was cancelled in the middle of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, to build a nuclear power plant at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, and to build units 3 and 4 of the domestic Shinhan Ui nuclear power plant and then supply electricity to the DPRK; the construction of these two units has been cancelled.

The opposition National Power Party described it as an earth-shattering event and demanded that the officials behind the construction of nuclear power plants for North Korea be identified and the reasons for it. The government’s response was that the civil servant in charge wrote the report for policy advice, not for the secret construction of nuclear power plants, and that the opposition party knows this well but is deliberately using the opportunity to launch a political campaign. The president, Moon Jae-in, indirectly responded by calling on the political class not to repeat the same tactics and promote confrontation.