The hard-line approach by the South Korean government toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is to be blamed for the ongoing standoff between the two Koreas, South Korea's opposition party leader said Tuesday.

Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, defended the engagement policy of the two previous administrations, commonly dubbed the "sunshine policy," from accusations that they only gave rise to provocations by Pyongyang as recently demonstrated in its shelling of a South Korean island last week.

The Lee Myung-bak administration has denied the rapprochement approach by his liberal predecessors and opted instead for sanctioning the DPRK, resulting in the DPRK's "armed provocation," he told a televised forum for Korea Broadcasting Journalists Club.

Sohn, while admitting that the sunshine policy was never a " panacea" in dealing with Pyongyang, said foes of the policy are misled if they believe engaging Pyongyang meant tolerating everything.

"The sunshine policy was about building a minimum condition for peace in the long term," he said.

Lee's two predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, have come under increasingly fierce criticism by the conservative base here for having aided Pyongyang only to see it turn against Seoul with a series of military provocations.

The conservative Lee administration, as it took office in 2008, quickly cut a free flow of aid to the DPRK and linked it to progress in Pyongyang's denuclearization progress, souring inter- Korean ties that have since further deteriorated.

The opposition leader, however, showed his support for a stern response to the DPRK, which bombarded a South Korean border island in what was the first attack on the South Korean soil and civilians since the 1950-53 Korean War. The DPRK claims the shelling was provoked by South Korean and U.S. forces then engaged in a naval exercise near a disputed western sea border it never acknowledged.