South Korea's Yoon seeks dialogue with North, path to unification

SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol offered on Thursday (Aug 15) to establish a working-level consultative body with North Korea to discuss ways to ease tension and resume economic co-operation, as he laid out his vision on unification of the neighbours.

In a National Liberation Day speech marking the 79th anniversary of independence from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule after World War Two, Yoon said he was ready to begin political and economic co-operation if North Korea "takes just one step" toward denuclearisation.

Yoon used the speech to unveil a blueprint for unification and make a fresh outreach to Pyongyang, following his government's recent offer to provide relief supplies for flood damage in the isolated North which he said had been rejected.

But a unified Korea appears a distant prospect with relations between the neighbours at the lowest point in decades as North Korea races to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities and takes steps to cut ties with the South, redefining it as a separate, hostile enemy state.

At the start of the year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called South Korea a "primary foe" and said unification was no longer possible.

Yoon said launching the "inter-Korean working group" could help relieve tensions and handle any issues ranging from economic co-operation to people-to-people exchanges to reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

"Dialogue and co-operation can bring about substantive progress in inter-Korean relations," he said.

In Washington, the White House senior director for the East Asia region, Mira Rapp-Hooper, said North Korea had shown no interest in dialogue, but the US, South Korea and Japan would continue to coordinate diplomatic strategies