Monday South Korea proposed a series of talks with North Korea. It is an attempt to remove the gunpowder between the two borders which has led to a huge amount of fighting in the past few decades. Since the Korean War of 1950-1953 there has not been any major progress towards negotiations between the two countries.
Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said at a news conference that South Korea wants to hold talks in January. However, it is still unclear whether North Korea will accept the offer or not. The reason behind this is that in the past decade North Korea has viewed these talks as an attempt to take over. It also wants a united Korea with Pyongyang in charge, which is nearly impossible.
Ryoo went further to mention hope of rejoining the families separated by the Korean War. In the past North Korea has made a negative responses to all offers of talks by saying that they were attempts to topple down Pyongyang’s Government. The talks which were to be held in October were also boycotted by the North Korean government in response to the offensive messages sent to that government. The two nations had previously agreed to restart the dialogue when a high-ranked North Korean delegation made a surprise visit to the Asian Games held in the South Korea in October. Ryoo has not addressed the nation on Monday leaving a huge question whether North will accept this offer or not.
“What the North wants from the South is some kind of assurance… to stop the leaflets so I am not sure if the North would embrace the offer easily,” said Hong, analyst at Sejong Institute. Still there are symptoms that the North Korean government will accept this offer in order to defuse tensions created by the recent cyber crimes. Washington has also decided to respond with a long-lasting reaction to the North Korean government for hacking Sony, which is the studio behind the movie The Interview, a comedy movie based on the idea of kidnapping Kim. North Korea has viewed this as a direct act of war. South Korea’s nuclear reactors have also been facing a series of cyber strings.
Tensions are raising day by day as the UN has turned its attentions towards Pyongyang for its record of crimes against humanity.
Analysis by Armaghan Naveed