North Korea called yesterday for better ties with South Korea, just days after threatening revenge for a naval clash on their tense Yellow Sea border.
The milder comments in the Rodong Sinmun, a newspaper of the ruling party, came one day before US President Barack Obama is due to start a visit to South Korea expected to focus on North Korea issues.
The Rodong and other official newspapers had last week vowed that the South would pay dearly for the exchange of fire last Tuesday, in which a North Korean patrol boat was set ablaze.
The South said the North’s boat crossed the border despite repeated warnings and opened direct fire in response to warning shots. The North said the South’s navy staged a premeditated provocation.
“It entirely depends on the attitude of the South Korean authorities whether or not inter-Korean relations continue to deteriorate,” the Korean Central News Agency quoted the Rodong Sinmun as saying.
“We will continue to make active efforts, as we did before, for the improvement of North-South relations,” it said.
The paper said ties could not be normalized in a situation where “one party distrusts its dialogue partner and escalates confrontation and even carries out a military provocation.”
“Nothing but war will break out in a situation of mutual hostility and escalating military tension,” it said.
The naval clash, the first for seven years, followed recent peace overtures from Pyongyang to both Seoul and Washington.
Some analysts suspect the North wanted to strengthen its bargaining hand in upcoming talks with the US by raising tensions on the peninsula.
US special envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth is scheduled to visit Pyongyang by the end of this year to try to bring it back to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.
China and the US want the six-party talks to resume as soon as possible, Obama said yesterday after meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said in Seoul he hopes Bosworth’s trip would quickly revive the six-nation talks.
The North quit the forum in April and staged its second atomic weapons test the following month, attracting tougher UN sanctions.
The US says Bosworth’s only goal is to bring the North back to the six-party talks, which also group China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Yu said the North may have various reasons for seeking bilateral talks and one of them “may be to disrupt the unity among the five nations,” which support the UN sanctions.
But the minister said he expects “no substantive negotiations” during Bosworth’s visit.
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