South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday called on officials to create conditions to allow North Korea to come forward for talks in the latest conciliatory gesture toward Pyongyang to jump-start stalled dialogue, Yonhap News Agency reported. Park also said the two Koreas should start substantial dialogue to lay the groundwork for their potential unification. The call came as North Korea has remained silent on South Korea's recent offer to ministerial talks in January to discuss such bilateral issues as the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
"I hope that you will make efforts to come up with conditions under which North Korea can respond," Park was quoted as saying in a meeting at the presidential office where she received a briefing on South Koreas' policy on North Korea, defense and foreign affairs. She did not elaborate on what she meant by conditions, though they appear to suggest that South Korea should take steps to stop its people from sending propaganda leaflets to North Korea, according to the report.
Park's request came days after North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission urged South Korea to clarify whether Seoul is serious about dialogue with Pyongyang or whether it will persist in the anti-North Korean leafleting campaign. The two Koreas last held high-level talks in February in 2014. They had agreed to hold high-level contact between late October and early November during a surprise visit to South Korea by a high-powered North Korean delegation. But the North later backtracked on the deal in protest of the leaflets.
For years, North Korean defectors in the South and conservative activists have flown the leaflets to the North via balloons to help encourage North Koreans to eventually rise up against the Pyongyang regime.
The issue has long been a constant source of tension between the two Koreas, which are still technically at war because the Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.