Kim open to summit with South Korea
Print Edition
NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Un proposed the “highest-level” talks with South Korea yesterday, opening the way to a historic summit as his country battles to fend off international prosecution over its human rights record.
The sudden move, made during his traditional New Year message, would clear the path for the first top-level inter-Korean meeting since a 2007 summit in Pyongyang.
“Depending on the mood and circumstances to be created, we have no reason not to hold the highest-level talks,” Kim said, calling for a turnaround in icy relations between the two Koreas, which are technically at war.
South Korean media said he was referring to a summit with President Park Geun-Hye.
South Korea welcomed the call as “meaningful” and suggested the two sides resume dialogue soon. “Our government hopes South and North Korea will hold dialogue without formality in the near future,” Ryoo Kihl-jae, the South’s unification minister in charge of inter-Korean affairs, told a briefing.
“The government takes (Kim’s message) as meaningful as it showed an advanced attitude towards inter-Korean dialogue and exchanges.”
Kim also urged Washington to take a “bold shift” in its policy toward Pyongyang and denounced the US for leading an international campaign over North Korea’s human rights record.
“The US and its followers are holding on to a nasty ‘human rights’ racket as their schemes to destroy our self-defensive nuclear deterrent and stifle our republic by force become unrealizable,” he said.
He described nuclear weapons, meanwhile, as the guardian of his country and vowed to sternly retaliate against “any provocations” threatening its dignity.
Pyongyang faces growing pressure to improve its human rights record, with the UN stepping up a campaign to refer North Korea’s leaders to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
The country, meanwhile, suffered a mysterious Internet outage last month after Washington vowed retaliation over a crippling cyber attack blamed on North Korea against Sony, the studio behind a controversial film about a fictional plot to assassinate Kim. A US State Department official, meanwhile, said: “We support improved inter-Korean relations.”
Kim said in his message that Pyongyang “will make every effort to advance dialogue and negotiations,” adding that the “tragic” division of the Korean peninsula should not be tolerated.
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