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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said he is ready to reestablish a vital direct line of communication with South Korea, in a possible offer of reconciliation.
He also accused the United States of proposing talks without changing its “hostile policy” towards the North.
Pyongyang cut direct lines in August this year to protest military exercises between South Korea and the United States.
Mr. Kim’s final comments came during the annual parliamentary session in Pyongyang.
“The United States is touting a ‘diplomatic engagement’ … but it is only a small trick to deceive the international community and hide its hostile acts and an extension of the hostile policy carried out by successive American administrations”, reports state media. KCNA said.
But Mr Kim appeared to be extending a conditional olive branch to South Korea.
The KCNA report stated that “[Kim Jong-un] expressed the intention to ensure that the North-South lines of communication which had been cut due to the deterioration of inter-Korean relations are re-established initially from the beginning of October ”.
“[But] it depends on the attitude of the South Korean authorities whether inter-Korean relations are restored or continue to maintain the current state of deterioration.
Mr Kim’s latest comments echo those his sister made earlier last week, where she said the North was willing to resume talks with the South if it ended its “hostile policies”.
“What must be abandoned are the attitudes of double-dealing and the hostile position of justifying their own actions while questioning our just exercise of the right to self-defense,” she said in a statement.
“It is only when such a precondition is met that it would be possible to sit down face to face and declare a significant end to the war.”
North Korea and South Korea are technically still at war because no peace deal was reached at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Direct lines of communication between the two have been cut – and restored – several times in recent years.
In 2020, after a failed North-South summit, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean border office that had been built to improve communications.
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