Jubilee Post News & Views
Special Desk
IN what could be said as a significant development in the strained relations between north and south Korea, Kim Yo Jong sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has shown willingness to talk to South Korea.
IN what is being seen as a step towards ending the Korean war, Kim Yo Jong, is a senior North Korean official helping oversee the country’s policies.
Her statement to resume talks but comes with a rider. She said if South Korea ends its hostile policies then the two sides can talk.
Jong is usually seen along side her brother and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and holds significant position in the decision making.
She was responding to a call from South Korea for renewed talks. The conflict, which split the peninsula into two, ended in 1953 with an armistice and not a peace treaty.
The two countries have technically been at war ever since, or at least locked in a tense relationship.
South Korean president Moon Jae-in recently called for the two Koreas and their allies, the US which backs the South, and China which is the North’s economic partner – to declare a formal end to the conflict and bring peace to the peninsula.
The idea was initially dismissed by a top North Korea but in an unexpected statement the women leader said the idea was admirable.
However she added that the North would only be willing to discuss the proposal if the South stopped their hostile policies.
“What needs to be dropped is the double-dealing attitudes, illogical prejudice, bad habits and hostile stand of justifying their own acts,” she said in her statement.
Prospect of ending a more than 70-year war on the Korean peninsula has been the hope of this administration in Seoul for nearly 5 years. But President Moon is running out of time. His successor will be elected in March.
He took a gamble on meeting Kim Jong-un and holding his hand on the sacred summit of Mount Paektu. But since then, relations between the two Koreas have soured.
North Korea even blew up an office which was purpose built to house talks between the two sides. It looked like all hope of peace talks were over.
But here we are, another small sliver of hope breaking through in the form of a statement from Kim Yo-jong.
Relations between the two countries have not improved much since denuclearisation talks between Kim and US president Donald Trump soured in 2019.
Moon, who has made engagement with the North a cornerstone of his presidency, has previously argued that a declaration to end the war would encourage the North to denuclearise.
Since their division after World War Two, North Korea and South Korea have experienced very different fortunes.
Japan ruled Korea from 1910 until the Japanese surrendered after World War Two in 1945. Afterwards, Soviet troops occupied the area north of the 38th parallel, and US troops the south.
The tensions between north and south centred on the differences between democracy and communism.
An industrial boom in the decades that followed the Korean War allowed South Korea to prosper. North Korea, however, became isolated under the Kim family dynasty.
