North Korea willing to talk to South if respect is assured

North Korea said it would consider a summit with South Korea if mutual respect can be assured, state news agency KCNA reported on Saturday.

"I think that only when impartiality and the attitude of respecting each other are maintained, can there be smooth understanding between the north and the south," Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a KCNA report.

Both countries remain technically at war since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War ended with an armistice not a peace treaty.

Recent peace talks, driven in part by former US president Donald Trump, have stalled since 2019.

Kim Yo Jong's comments followed an address by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in which he repeatedly called for a formal end to the war.

What else did Kim say?

Kim, who is a senior official who handles inter-Korean affairs, pointed out some benefits of inter-Korean talks, such as providing a chance to discuss meaningful and successful solutions to issues. These include: "The re-establishment of the North-South joint liaison office and the North-South summit, to say nothing of the timely declaration of the significant termination of the war," Kim said.

She also noted the renewed appetite in the South for a formal declaration of the end of the Korean War.

"I felt that the atmosphere of the South Korean public desiring to recover the inter-Korean relations from a deadlock and achieve peaceful stability as soon as possible is irresistibly strong," she said.

"We, too, have the same desire," she added.

The comments by Kim followed a similar statement she issued Friday that the North was willing to resume talks with the South if certain conditions were met.

The state of inter-Korean relations

Ties between the countries thawed in 2018, when Moon helped set up Kim Jong Un's first summit with Trump.

The Korean leaders met three times that year and vowed to resume economic cooperation when possible. They expressed optimism that sanctions on North Korea would end and allow such projects.

But Pyongyang later cut off ties with Seoul following the collapse of the second summit between Kim and Trump in 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korea's demand for major sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear facility.

Relations worsened and in June 2020, North Korea severed all contact with the South in a row over anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by activists.

But recently, Kim and Moon Jae-in have exchanged letters and Kim agreed to important emergency hotline channels across the demilitarized zone demarcating the two countries.

kmm/rt (Reuters, AP)