South Korean president proposes official dialogue channel with North Korea

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol proposed an official dialogue channel with North Korea that can “take up any issue” as tension rises on the Korean Peninsula.

In an address marking Liberation Day on Thursday, which celebrates the 1945 end of Japan’s colonial rule, Yoon proposed that authorities from both Koreas establish an “Inter-Korean Working Group”.

“This body could take up any issue, ranging from relieving tensions to economic cooperation, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and disaster and climate-change responses,” said Yoon.

Yoon said he believed that dialogue and cooperation can bring about substantive progress in inter-Korean relations, urging the North to respond to his proposal.

The president also stressed the importance of helping awaken the people of North Korea to the “value of freedom,” outlining plans to expand North Koreans’ “right of access to information.”

“Testimonials from numerous North Korean defectors show that our radio and TV broadcasts helped make them aware of the false propaganda and instigations emanating from the North Korean regime,” Yoon said.

“If more North Koreans come to recognize that unification through freedom is the only way to improve their lives and are convinced that a unified Republic of Korea will embrace them, they will become strong, friendly forces for a freedom-based unification,” he said. The Republic of Korea is the official name of South Korea.

Apart from that, Yoon said the South would actively support nongovernmental activities that promote freedom and human rights in North Korea while continuing to try to provide humanitarian aid.

“The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation,” Yoon said.

“Only when a unified free and democratic nation rightfully owned by the people is established across the entire Korean Peninsula will we finally have complete liberation,” he added, noting “complete liberation remains an unfinished task” as the Korean Peninsula remains divided.

The two Koreas are still technically at war, having signed an armistice, not a peace treaty, when the Korean War ended in 1953.

North Korea has recently abandoned calls for reunification and, since the start of the year, its supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, has ordered the government to take several steps to distance the North from the South.

It has removed language from state media indicating that Koreans are “one people,” ended economic cooperation with the South, and has even torn down a major Pyongyang landmark symbolizing a future reunion. Kim has also publicly threatened to “annihilate” Seoul.

In a speech last week, Kim Jong Un called South Korea “trash” while discussing South Korean media reports on the North.

Separately, the North’s state-run news agency on Tuesday criticized security collaboration among the United States, Japan and South Korea, saying that it would only expose people of Japan and South Korea to the danger of nuclear war.