Seoul calls for resumed talks with Pyongyang
January 12, 2015, 4:32 am

Kim Jong Un addressing the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang [North Korean Central News Agency]

South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday appeared to respond to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s New Year overture in which he said he would meet her in a summit.

“My position is that to ease the pain of division and to accomplish peaceful unification, I am willing to meet with anyone. If it is helpful, I am up for a summit meeting with the North. There is no pre-condition,” she said.

But an exchange of verbal good will to hold a “peace” summit has rarely translated into action.

Almost exactly two years ago, Pyongyang signaled it was ready to change track with Seoul, which had just held a presidential election.

At the time, Kim had told then President-elect Park that it was time both countries stepped back from confrontation and worked toward reunification.

In 2013, the two countries appeared to move closer together. In early September of that year, the two Koreas reached an agreement to fully reopen the Kaesong industrial complex, which was shut down earlier after tensions between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington peaked over the former’s launching of upgraded missiles and the latter holding joint military exercises.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex was established in 2004 as an attempt to bring the two Koreas closer through cross-border cooperation and employing 53,000 North Korean workers.

But just four months later, Seoul refused to bow to Pyongyang’s demands that it cancel annual US war exercises it says are for defensive purposes, and the two Koreas were back to a war of words.

The war exercises – known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle – which are held from the end of February till the middle of April, have been a major source of contention for Pyongyang.

Last year, Pyongyang’s National Defense Commission said in a policy bureau spokesman’s statement that dialogue between the two Koreas about security on the peninsula “can never be compatible” with war games that are designed to wage war.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has previously said that North Korea is one of the world’s greatest threats.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies