North Korea rebuffed South Korea’s push for a declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War as a way to restore peace, saying Friday such a step could be used as a "smokescreen covering up the US hostile policy" against the North. In a speech at the UN General Assembly earlier this week, South Korean President Moon Jae-in reiterated his calls for the end-of-the-war declaration that he said could help achieve denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song dismissed Moon's call as premature so long as US policies were unchanged, the AP reports.
"It should be clearly understood that the declaration of the termination of the war is of no help at all to stabilizing the situation of the Korean Peninsula at the moment," Ri said. He said American weapons and troops deployed in South Korea and its vicinity and regular US military drills in the region “all point to the US hostile policy toward (North Korea) getting vicious day by day." The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula in a technical state of war.
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un struck a milder tone later Friday. Kim Yo Jong said her country is willing to resume talks with South Korea if it doesn’t provoke the North, reports the AP. To achieve the end-of-the war declaration, she said: "We must ensure mutual respect toward one another and abandon prejudiced views, harshly hostile policies, and unfair double standards toward the other side first." Her proposal came days after North Korea performed its first missile tests in six months and South Korea performed its first test of a submarine-launched missile. (More North Korea stories.)
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