A Quote by Jimmy Carter

At the beginning of this year also, I called upon the North Korean side to open dialog between the responsible authorities of the South and the North at any place, at any time, and at any level, in order to prevent a recurrence of war and to cooperate to speed up the peaceful unification of our fatherland. However, no sincere response has yet been made by North Korea.
During the periods when South Korea played a more active role, the inter-Korean relationship was more peaceful, and there was less tension between the United States and North Korea. The last U.S. administration pursued a policy of strategic patience and did not make any effort to improve its relationship with North Korea. Also, the previous Korean government did not make any such efforts. The result is the reality you see today - North Korea continuing to advance its nuclear and missile program.
We must work to make the South-North Korea dialogue lead to talks between the United States and North Korea. Only then can we peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.
I think the regime in North Korea is more fragile than people think. The country's economic system remains desperate, and one thing that could happen for example would be under a new government in South Korea, to get the South Korean government to live up to its own constitution, which says any Korean who makes it to South Korea, is a Korean citizen. A citizen of the Republic of Korea. And you could imagine the impact that would have inside North Korea if people thought, "If I could get out and make it to South Korea, I could have a different life."
In contrast, Western historians, and those in South Korea, say the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950. Both sides agree that after the war began, the North Korean Army captured Seoul in three days and pushed as far south as Pusan before American troops arrived to drive back the North Koreans nearly as far north as the border to China.
My parents fled from North Korea during the Korean War because they despised the North Korean Communist regime. They fled to seek freedom and came to South Korea.
Obviously, the US does not want a shooting war with North Korea. But there has to be some path out of this situation that is also presented that is peaceful. We have sanctions, we have deterrence, but the third leg of any resolution to this problem has to be dialogue. It seems prudent for the US to not only threaten North Korea, but to also offer a way forward.
The solution to North Korea is the reunification of the Korean Peninsula. China could influence the North; it supplies 80 to 90 percent of North Korea's energy. The United States have to put pressure on China in order for China to pressure North Korea.
After listening to the radio, I learned what the North Korean government had been telling us about the war was not true. This myth allowed the North to hold the South responsible for the war.
Although North Korea's position differs (from Tokyo's), Japan's basic stance remains unchanged ? to seek sincere responses from the North Korean side to resolve the abduction and nuclear issues.
North Korea is no threat at all. I have already spoken about it during countless televised interviews. I visited North Korea and mingled with its people. There, nobody wants war. The North Korean people paid a terrible price for their independence. Its civilians were murdered mercilessly in tunnels by Western forces; its women were brutally raped, entire villages and towns leveled to the ground, or burned to ashes. All this is never discussed in the West, but is remembered in North Korea.
So South Korean ability is very much limited to handle North Korean, you know, difficulties. So we don't want to see an immediate collapse of the North Korea regime.
Even after arriving in South Korea, it's dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.
Beijing cannot sit by and let her North Korean ally be bombed, nor can it allow U.S. and South Korean forces to defeat the North, bring down the regime, and unite the peninsula, with U.S. and South Korean soldiers sitting on the Yalu, as they did in 1950 before Mao ordered his Chinese army into Korea.
Japan and South Korea are on high alert after North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket. Both countries are surprised by North Korea's successful launch, but definitely not as surprised as North Korea.
China is ruthlessly pragmatic. It supports North Korea for its own selfish interests. And I believe that China no longer considers us an ally. The current president, Xi Jinping, cultivates close relations with South Korea. He has never met with me, the leader of North Korea, something that the leader of China has always done. At the grand celebrations in Beijing two years ago commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, he placed the president of Russia and the president of South Korea at his side. In North Korea, we pay a lot of attention to ceremonies and what they signal.
What we wanted to tell North Korea is, look, we have told you we are not looking for regime change; we are not looking for war. But don't give us a reason to get involved in any of this, and so we're going to go ahead and push for a strong resolution against North Korea.
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