JAKARTA - South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed on Monday to use his final months in office to press for a diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea, despite public silence from Pyongyang over its bid for a peace declaration between the two Koreas.
"The government will pursue the normalization of inter-Korean relations and an irreversible path of peace to the end," President Moon said in his final New Year's address before his five-year term ends in May.
"I hope dialogue efforts will continue in the next administration as well," he continued.
In his New Year's Eve speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made no mention of President Moon's calls for a declaration to officially end the 1950-1953 Korean War, or stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.
President Moon held several summits with Leader Kim, including once in Pyongyang, during tumultuous negotiations in 2018 and 2019, before talks stalled amid disagreements over international demands for North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang called for Washington and Seoul to ease sanctions and remove all policies that Pyongyang considers hostile.
President Moon is pushing for an "end of war declaration" as a way to restart stalled negotiations, signaling his administration for "back-track" discussions with North Korea.
But North Korea has not publicly responded to the latest push. Meanwhile, the United States has said it supports the idea, but may disagree with South Korea on the timing.
"It is true that there is still a long way to go," President Moon acknowledged, but argued that if inter-Korean relations improved, the international community would follow suit.
President Moon further said his reach into North Korea has been made possible by a large military buildup that helps make South Korea safer.
"Peace is possible in strong security," he said.
To note, the COVID-19 Pandemic overshadows the stalemate with North Korea, as Pyongyang put the country into an unprecedented lockdown. Meanwhile, President Moon is facing domestic pressure to contain the first major coronavirus outbreak outside China in early 2020.
Since then, South Korea has used aggressive tracking and tracing, as well as social distancing rules and a late but thorough vaccination campaign to keep overall cases and deaths relatively low by global standards.
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