S Korea calls for talks as North test-fires missiles
SEOUL: Talks with North Korea should not be for political show but contribute to establishing peace, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Wednesday, just hours after the North test fired two cruise missiles into the sea.
Speaking at a wide-ranging news conference to mark his first 100 days in office, Yoon made no mention of the launches, which were only publicly reported later by the South Korean military.
Yoon said his government has no plans to pursue its own nuclear deterrent and called instead for more diplomacy in the face of growing North Korean nuclear weapons capabilities.
Yoon repeated his willingness to provide phased economic aid to North Korea if it ended nuclear weapons development and began denuclearisation, noting that he had called for a dialogue with Pyongyang since his campaign.
“Any dialogue between the leaders of the South and North, or negotiations between working-level officials, should not be a political show, but should contribute to establishing substantive peace on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia,” he said.
The comments were an apparent criticism of summits involving his predecessor Moon Jae-in, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and then-US President Donald Trump.
Despite those meetings, denuclearisation talks stalled in 2019 and North Korea has said it will not trade away its self-defence, though it has called for an end to sanctions. It has been observed preparing for a possible nuclear test, which would be its first since 2017.
North Korea’s launches on Wednesday were the first reported in months, and come a day after South Korea and the United States began preliminary joint drills ahead of a restart of live field training halted under Moon.
Yoon said South Korea was not in a position to guarantee the North’s security if it gave up its nuclear weapons, but Seoul did not want a forced change in the status quo in the North.
Yoon said that he was committed to the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and working with the United States to boost its “extended deterrence” for South Korea.