North Korea Wants Better Ties with South, Ready to Fight any War with US

Local Editor

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country seeks better ties with the neighboring South to protect peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, which had been locked in a circle of military rhetoric over the past years.

Kim made the comments in a meeting with visiting Chinese envoy Liu Yunshan in Pyongyang, Xinhua, the official news agency of China, reported on Saturday.

North Korea needs "a peaceful and stable external environment as it is striving to develop [its] economy and improve people's livelihood," Kim said, adding Pyongyang "is willing to make efforts to improve relations between the north and the south and safeguard the stability of the peninsula."

The Korean Peninsula had witnessed tension since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953 and ended in an armistice. No peace deal had been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.

Kim further said Liu's visit will "play an important role in the development of bilateral ties," expressing hope that China will "maintain close high-level exchanges and strengthen pragmatic cooperation in various fields."

For his part, Liu said that preserving stability and peace in the volatile Korean Peninsula is in the interest of all sides, and that Beijing was "willing to work with the DPRK [North Korea] to strive for early resumption of the six-party talks on the nuclear issue."

The six-party negotiations, which included Russia, China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, stalled in April 2009 after the United Nations imposed tougher sanctions on Pyongyang for conducting nuclear and missile tests.

The diplomatic meeting between Kim and Liu came ahead of a massive military parade in Pyongyang on Saturday that will mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North's ruling Workers' Party.

In a rare speech to the assembled masses, a tribute to the ruling party that has served at the whim of three generations of the Kim dynasty, the leader lashed out at the United States, vowing to fight "any war" if provoked.

"Our party dauntlessly declares that our revolutionary armed forces are capable of fighting any kind of war provoked by the US and we are ready to protect our people and the blue sky of our motherland," he said.

His words were met with rapturous applause from tens of thousands of flag-waving crowds, while above the square, a large banner slung from a gas-filled balloon read: "Long live the invincible Workers' Party of Korea."

North Korea had conducted three nuclear tests and threatened a fourth as part of a nuclear weapons and missile program that it has pursued through a barrage of international sanctions.

An exhaustively researched report published this week by the US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that North Korea had between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons as of the end of 2014.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team