PYONGYANG, August 14 (Itar-Tass) - The North Korean Rodong Sinmun newspaper says on Wednesday that it is necessary to take measures “to improve inter-Korean relations and achieve independent unification of the Fatherland within the shortest time frame through united efforts by all Koreans”.
The confrontation between the North and the South “has brought nothing but a split and miseries to the Korean nation”.
It is necessary to make transition to mutual trust and cooperation in bilateral relations, “settling all emerging problems through a dialogue,” the newspaper writes. It offers to do away with stagnation in bilateral ties with the help of principles fixed in the joint declarations of 2000 and 2007, “that became symbols of national reconciliation and cooperation”.
The article comes at the time when North Korea is going through the seventh round of difficult and stalled talks between the North and the South about the fate of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, that has been idle for already more than three months. All previous working meetings of the two countries’ delegations have yielded no result.
Last week, a representative from the Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland offered a new round of talks on August 14. He signaled the readiness of the North Korean authorities to return North Korean workers to Kaesong enterprises, to guarantee the safety of South Korean staffers as well as to ensure the protection of property.
The Kaesong Industrial Complex was closed on April 8 amid a new worsening of ties between North Korea and South Korea. Pyongyang said this had been caused by “an intention of the South Korean regime to transform that zone into a centre of confrontation between fellow countrymen in the North and the South of the Korean peninsula”.
The operation of the Kaesong complex, where 53 thousand North Korean workers were producing consumer goods at factories, opened by 123 South Korean firms, was stopped at the order of Pyongyang. The DPRK motivated this step by the reaction to the annual US-South Korean war games. The Kaesong Industrial Complex was established just north of the border in 2004 as a rare symbol of between the two Koreas.