SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea’s new government will seek to sign a peace treaty with the North if it abandons its nuclear weapons, a minister said Thursday (June 29) ..
SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea’s new government will seek to sign a peace treaty with the North if it abandons its nuclear weapons, a minister said Thursday (June 29) .
Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae Sung’s comments came hours before South Korea’s new leader Moon Jae In – who backs engagement with Pyongyang – was set to hold his first summit with US President Donald Trump, with the North’s growing nuclear and missile threats casting a long shadow.
The two Koreas are still technically at war because a peace treaty was never agreed to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the conflict on the peninsula.
The US – the South’s security guarantor – has 28,500 troops stationed in the country to protect it from its neighbour, and a treaty could entail their withdrawal, which has long been demanded by Pyongyang.
« We have to get over the current unstable system of armistice and put an end to the war on the Korean peninsula that has not yet ended, » Chun said in a keynote speech at a seminar.
