South Korea calls out North's silence on Yoon's unification vision

SEOUL -- South Korea's top official for relations with North Korea on Thursday implored the reclusive country to respond to a vision President Yoon Suk Yeol proposed last week for eventually bringing together the rival states.

Minister of Unification Kim Yung-ho called on Pyongyang to agree to working-level talks as part of a proposed new dialogue channel. That format was part of a doctrine outlined by Yoon in a speech on Aug. 15, an annual public holiday marking the end of Japan's 1910 to 1945 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula.