Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Moon Jaein has pledged on Monday that he will use his remaining months of office to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough between North Korea and South Korea, despite Pyongyang’s public silence regarding his efforts to declare peace.

Moon stated that the government would pursue normalization of inter-Korean relationships and an irreversible pathway to peace till the end in his last New Year’s speech before his 5-year term expires in May. “I trust that efforts to dialogue will continue under the new administration.”

Kim Jong Un, North Korean leader, did not mention Moon’s call for a formal declaration ending Korea’s 1950-1953 war or stalled talks on denuclearisation with the United States in his address to the nation.

Moon and Kim met multiple times during negotiations, which began in 2018. And then, talks were halted by disagreements regarding international demands that North give up its arsenal of nukes and Pyongyang’s request for Washington to relax sanctions and abandon all other “hostile” policies.

Moon has proposed an “end to war declaration” in order to restart those stagnant negotiations. The administration, however, hinted that backchannel discussions might be possible.

However, North Korea did not respond to this latest call. The United States said that it supported the idea and may have a disagreement with South Korea over the timing.

Moon admitted that “it is true there is still much to do”, but said that the international community would follow if inter-Korean relations improved.

Moon said his outreach to North Korea had been enabled by a large military buildup https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/moons-push-military-independence-may-echo-far-beyond-his-presidency-2021-10-22 that helped make South Korea safer.

He said, “Peace can be achieved with strong security.”

While the North Korean standoff was overshadowed by the COVID-19 outbreak, Pyongyang placed the country in an unprecedented lockdown. Moon had to face domestic pressures to end the first coronavirus pandemic outside China.

South Korea has used aggressive tracking, tracing and social distancing to reduce overall deaths and cases by global standards.