2010-08-16 08:13

SEOUL - The Republic of Korea urged the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on Sunday to end its military provocations amid calls for unification while Pyongyang threatened Seoul with the "severest punishment" over massive joint war games planned with the United States.

ROK President Lee Myung-bak delivers a speech during a ceremony to celebrate Korea's Liberation Day from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, in Seoul on Sunday. Lee Jin-Man / Associated Press

The rivals exchanged tit-for-tat warnings as the ROK unveiled a roadmap for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula on the eve of the 10-day exercise involving some 56,000 ROK soldiers and 30,000 American soldiers.

"It is about time Pyongyang looked straight at reality, made a courageous change and came up with a drastic decision," ROK's President Lee Myung-bak said.

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Pyongyang and Seoul "need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification," he said.

Lee warned that ROK would not tolerate any military provocations from its neighbor.

But the military counteraction of the DPRK will be the severest punishment ... ever met in the world," a spokesman for the DPRK's army General Chief said according to state media.

Lee - marking the 65th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese rule at the end of World War II in 1945 - called the ROK warship's sinking in March an "unprovoked attack" by the DPRK and demanded Pyongyang heed calls to improve ties with Seoul.

He detailed a multi-step blueprint for reunification, starting with a "peace community" after the peninsula is cleared of nuclear weapons.

The next step is to dramatically develop the DPRK economy and form an "economic community in which the two will work for economic integration", he said.

Eventually, the two sides will be able "to remove the wall of different systems" and establish a community which will ensure "dignity, freedom and basic rights of all individuals", he said.

He also said ROK should prepare for unification with the DPRK by studying measures including the adoption of a unification tax aimed at raising money for the costs of integration.

"Through this process, we can ultimately bring about the peaceful unification of Korea," he added.

Lee also proposed "unification tax" to finance the hefty cost of reuniting the long-divided nations with a growing economic gap.

Reunification with its impoverished neighbor in the north would cost ROK about 1.3 trillion dollars, according to a recent study commissioned by a parliamentary committee.

Central bank data showed the DPRK's gross domestic product last year stood at 24.7 billion dollars, less than three percent of that in ROK.

Lee, who is halfway through his single five-year term, has advocated a hard-line approach towards Pyongyang.

In his biggest cabinet reshuffle a week ago, Lee kept his foreign, defence and unification ministers in place, signalling little change in his policy.

Meanwhile, the DPRK's propaganda campaign has surged into cyberspace with a new Twitter account emerging recently, hot on the heels of its video premiere clips posted on YouTube.

Pyongyang has begun micro-blogging under the name @uriminzok, with a number of posts pointing its few dozen followers to anti-Seoul and anti-US statements on the country's official website (http://www.uriminzokkiri.com).

The ROK blocks the site - while only few in the DPRK even have access to a computer.