(dpa/NAN)
South Korea on Tuesday offered to hold high-level talks with North Korea, a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un extended his country’s bitter rival a rare olive branch during his New Year’s address.
Unification Minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, proposed that the two sides meet in the village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone on Jan. 9 to discuss North Korea’s participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
If the talks take place, they will be the first meeting between the two governments in more than two years.
North Korean leader on Monday signalled a willingness to hold talks with South Korea and send a delegation to the Games in February.
“The Winter Games to be held in South Korea will be a good occasion for the country.
We sincerely hope that the Winter Olympics will be a success,” Yonhap reported Jong-Un as saying.
“We are ready to take various steps, including the dispatch of the delegation. To this end, the two Koreas can immediately meet,” he added.
South Korea reacted to his proposal with a call for diplomacy and dialogue.
The South Korean government said Monday it “hopes that South and North Korea can peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue together in close cooperation with the international community.”
The two countries have been in a technical state of war since 1953, when a ceasefire came into force.
Talks have started multiple times since then to establish a formal peace treaty, but have always collapsed due to the acrimony on each side.
North Korea is enraged by the South’s reliance on the U.S., especially its decision to let U.S. troops be stationed there and its policy of conducting regular military drills with those troops.
It has also reacted badly to South Korean programmes to blast propaganda messages across the border by loudspeaker.
South Korea has, for its part, long complained about: North Korea’s unwillingness to allow family members separated by the war to have reunions.
Others are occasional kidnappings of South Korea citizens; sporadic shelling by North Korean armed forces and the North Korean nuclear missile programme.
Tensions escalated on the Korean peninsula over the course of 2017 as North Korea forged ahead with developing its missiles and nuclear weapons.
In December, the UN responded with its harshest sanctions yet against Pyongyang after the rogue state launched an intercontinental ballistic missile which it claims can reach the U.S. mainland.
Pyongyang has responded that it needs a nuclear programme to defend itself from any potential U.S. military measures.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the mooted exchange between Seoul and Pyongyang was “a good thing.”
“China welcomes and supports that both North Korea and South Korea take this as an opportunity to make effective efforts to improve their mutual relations.
“And also to promote the relaxation of the situation on the peninsula and the denuclearisation of the peninsula,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.(dpa/NAN)