South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stated on Sunday that the ministry had previously concentrated too much on delivering help to North Korea and that this needed to change, according to Yonhap news agency.

Kim Yung-ho, the new minister, is a conservative academic and outspoken opponent of North Korean human rights violations, which Yoon has attempted to highlight amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“The Unification Ministry has been acting like the ministry of North Korea aid and it is wrong,” Yoon was quoted as saying telling staff in a statement issued by his press secretary. “It’s time for the unification ministry to change.”

According to the report, Yoon urged the ministry to stand up for liberal democratic values, and said unification should bring a “better and more human life” to people in the South and North.

In 2019, Kim wrote in an online column that the path to unification would open once North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “regime is overthrown and North Korea is liberated.”