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    Home»Breaking»South Korean President Lee reaffirms push for peace as Pyongyang rejects overtures
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    South Korean President Lee reaffirms push for peace as Pyongyang rejects overtures

    Jae youngBy Jae youngJuly 29, 2025No Comments4 Mins Read
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    July 29, 2025

    SEOUL – President Lee Jae Myung reaffirmed his administration’s push for peace on the Korean Peninsula on Monday as Pyongyang rejected Seoul’s gestures for an inter-Korean thaw.

    The liberal president highlighted the importance of “restoring trust” between the divided Koreas and building towards peace on the Korean peninsula, during a ceremony at the presidential office to present a letter of appointment to Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said in a briefing.

    Earlier on Monday, South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement that Seoul will continue to take necessary actions to ensure a Korean Peninsula free of hostility. This is aligned with the Lee administration’s stance and goal to achieve peace without conflict, it added.

    This followed comments from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, who on Monday said that they are not interested in reviving talks with Seoul, in response to the Lee administration’s efforts to mend ties with Pyongyang.

    “We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither a reason to meet nor an issue to be discussed with the ROK,” Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the ruling party’s central committee, said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency. ROK is the acronym for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.

    Kim Yo-jong’s remarks referred to Lee’s efforts to thaw inter-Korean ties and restore suspended dialogue channels with the North. The Lee administration has halted anti-Pyongyang loudspeaker broadcasts along the border and repatriated six North Korean fishermen via the maritime border in the East Sea, after they had drifted into southern waters. It also asked South Korean family members of those abducted by the North to stop flying balloons filled with “anti-Pyongyang” leaflets to the North.

    But the powerful sister brushed off such efforts and called the decision to halt the loudspeaker broadcasts a “reversible turning back of what they should not have done in the first place.” She added that if Seoul expected it could reverse all its actions “with a few sentimental words,” it would be a “serious miscalculation.”

    Kim Yo-jong also lambasted Lee by saying that he “is no different from his predecessor in blindly adhering to the South Korea-US alliance” and pursuing confrontation with the North. She denounced the South Korea-US joint military exercises by calling them “aggressive” and claimed that the decades-old allies will attempt to blame the “deteriorating” security situation on Pyongyang. The North has routinely condemned the joint military drills as a rehearsal for invasion and a provocation.

    On Seoul’s Unification Minister Chung’s recent expression of hopes for Kim Jong-un’s participation in the APEC summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, scheduled for October, the North Korean leader’s sister called the move delusional.

    Chung told reporters later Monday that he has “an intent” to propose “adjusting” the annual South Korea-US large-scale Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, scheduled for mid-August this year, to Lee. It will be a key agenda issue at Tuesday’s meeting of the National Security Council, presided over by Lee. The details, including a potential scale-back in the size of the exercise and a change in the timeframe, would be announced after the meeting.

    Meanwhile, the Unification Ministry interpreted Kim Yo-jong’s remarks as a sign that Pyongyang is “closely monitoring” the Lee administration’s North Korea policy, the ministry’s spokesperson, Koo Byoung-sam, told a press briefing. It also reflects the reality of “the high walls of distrust” existing between the two Koreas.

    “The government will not waver due to each and every reaction from North Korea but will calmly and consistently pursue efforts to forge inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation and realize mutual peace on the Korean Peninsula,” Koo said.

    Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, echoed the Unification Ministry’s interpretation, saying that Kim’s remarks reaffirmed the North’s view of seeing inter-Korean ties as those between “two states hostile to each other.” It is also an intent to put pressure on the South and draw a reaction from Seoul, only 50 days after the launch of the new administration and almost immediately after Unification Minister Chung was appointed last week.

    Kim Yo-jong’s statement released Monday marks Pyongyang’s first official statement on the Lee Jae Myung administration.

    In late 2023, Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean ties as “two states hostile to each other, a shift from its previous unification goals and a turn towards a policy to view the South as a separate, hostile state.

    mkjung@heraldcorp.com

    Conflict/War Geopolitics North Korea Region South Korea The Korea Herald
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    Jae young

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