North Korea renews offer of unconditional talks in move to ease tensions

Published on Saturday 8 January 2011 12:00

THE North Korean government has repeated an offer for unconditional talks with South Korea to ease tensions on the divided peninsula days after South Korea dismissed earlier calls by the North for negotiations.

Meanwhile, North Korea's official Twitter account appears to have been hacked yesterday, which is believed to be the birthday of leader Kim Jong-il's youngest son and heir-apparent, Kim Jong-un.

Four messages critical of the Kim dynastry remained posted in the account for ten hours.

"Let's make a new world by removing our people's sworn enemy - traitor Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un!" one message read. Another urged the North's military to "point the gun" at Kim Jong-il for diverting money to the country's missile and nuclear programmes.

Tensions escalated after a North Korean artillery barrage on a South Korean-held island near their disputed maritime border killed four South Koreans on 23 November last year.

The attack - the first on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War - which ended in a ceasefire - occurred in waters not far from where a North Korean torpedo allegedly sank a South Korean warship eight months earlier. That attack killed 46 sailors. North Korea has denied responsibility.

"We do not want to see the present South Korean authorities pass the five-year term of their office idly without North-South dialogue," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

"There is neither conditionality in the North's proposal for dialogue nor need to cast any doubt about its real intention," it said.

North Korea also proposed holding separate talks later this month or in early February on other issues, including resumption of a suspended joint tourism project and co-operation at an industrial complex in the city of Kaesong.

North Korea called last week for unconditional and early talks with South Korea, but Seoul urged the North to show it has changed through actions, not words.

North Korea's sudden willingness to talk fits a well-established and - for diplomats engaged in the often tortuous negotiations in the past - tiresome pattern.

North Korea, the complaint goes, creates a crisis and, when panic and fear eventually envelope Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, then offers the possibility of negotiations to win badly needed food, fuel and other aid.