North Korea’s Kim seeks end to conflict with South

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a speech on state media.

Kim took over power in the reclusive state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011. But North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim’s speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a state which vilifies the US and its ally South Korea.

The impoverished country raised tensions in the region by launching a long-range rocket in December that it said was aimed at putting a scientific satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation.

North Korea is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under UN sanctions.

“An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south,” Kim said. “The past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war.”

“(Kim’s statement) apparently contains a message that he has an intention to dispel the current face-off (between the two Koreas), which could eventually be linked with the North’s call for aid (from the South),” said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification.

“But such a move does not necessarily mean any substantive change in the North Korean regime’s policy towards the South.”

Last month, South Korea elected as president Park Geun-hye. She has vowed to pursue engagement with the North and called for dialogue but has demanded that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.

— Reuters