Buzzoca

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol today proposed the creation of a new ‘inter-Korean working group’ to ease tensions with North Korea, which are currently at their peak.

‘As long as division persists, our liberation will remain incomplete,’ said Yoon Suk Yeol in a speech marking the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945, which ended Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula.

 

‘The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and hunger,’ he added, calling for the creation of a new working group.

The South Korean President explained that the new working group ‘could address any issue, from easing tensions to economic co-operation, including people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and responses to disasters and climate change’.

Yoon Suk Yeol’s proposal has little chance of being understood, since inter-Korean relations are currently weak. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un officially gave up any hope of reunification in January 2024 and dissolved all the institutions responsible for relations with Seoul, calling South Korea the ‘main enemy’.

Since May, North Korea has sent thousands of rubbish-laden balloons into the South, prompting Seoul to resume loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border and to suspend a 2018 agreement aimed at preventing clashes between the two armies.

Between 2018 and 2020, during a calmer period between the two enemies, there was an inter-Korean liaison office, located in Kaesong, North Korea, a few kilometers from the dividing line with the South, which hosted several meetings of senior officials from both countries, but was dynamited by North Korea in June 2020.

There are also North-South telephone communication lines, but the North Koreans have not answered calls from the South since April 2023.