A North Korean elite-turned-South Korean lawmaker has insisted Seoul must be firm and patient in dealing with Pyongyang, asserting that Seoul must avoid talking for the sake of talking, or giving unilateral concessions.

Rep. Cho Myung-chul of the ruling Saenuri Party also urged Seoul’s National Assembly to pass a human rights bill aiming to improve the situation in the North as soon as possible. The bill has been stalled in the Assembly since 2005.

“The North refuses to apologize for the 2010 Cheonan sinking and the 2010 Yeonpyeongdo Island shelling,” Cho told the Korea Herald, touching on the March 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan and the North’s November 2010 shelling of a South Korean island.

A North Korean submarine torpedoed the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors. The North’s shelling of Yeonpyeongdo Island left two South Korean marines and two civilians dead.

“Some in the South say it’s time to move on and engage the North in any way possible, even though the North has refused to apologize,” Cho added.

“But if we forgive them again and just forget about it, nothing will come of it. How can we just forgive them, when they kill our young men left and right, whenever they want?” the first-term lawmaker said.

“One apology from the North would be better than 100 meaningless high-level discussions in building (inter-Korean) trust,” he said.

Cho, 56, is a former professor of economics at Kim Il Sung University, the North’s top school. Cho defected to the South in 1994 while serving as an exchange professor in China, leaving his parents, his brothers, a wife and children in the North.

Cho also said it was “imperative” that the Assembly pass the North Korea human rights bill sooner than later.

“The North is a country where freedom is absolutely absent,” the lawmaker said, widening his eyes as he spoke. “I know this because I’ve been there, and lived there.”

The North Korea human rights bill has been stalled due to partisan disagreements between the Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy.

The conservative Saenuri Party backs a version aiming to pressure the Pyongyang regime on its political concentration camps and documented cases of torture. The main opposition backs a version that would not “provoke” the communist government there and worsen tensions.

Cho said his frustration with the North’s repressive government led him to come to the South. The former North Korean elite added that he could see “no future” in the North.

“I felt that if I, a person from one of the most prestigious families in the North, defected, I would be able to shock the government’s leadership. My defection was a form of protest.”

But Cho appeared to be reluctant to discuss his family, which still lives in the North. His father was a top secretary in the Kim Il Sung regime when Cho defected. Cho said he wasn’t sure if his father was alive.

“I heard several years ago that my mother had passed away,” he said. “When I came to the South I was lonely, because I was alone.

“I overcame this by throwing myself into work. The people around me thought that I was hardworking. But the secret is that I worked so hard mostly because I wanted to forget that I was alone,” Cho said.

Cho, a proportional representative, is seeking reelection in next year’s parliamentary election. Cho will run in Incheon.

“There are some North Korean defectors living there, and there are many people who hail from the Chungcheong regions there, too,” he said, adding that his parents had been born in the Chungcheong region before the Korean War.

By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)