SEOUL, Aug 15 (AFP): South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday proposed an "Inter-Korean Working Group" aimed at relieving soaring tensions with Pyongyang and exploring avenues for economic cooperation.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North recently announcing the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers to its southern border.
North Korea has sent thousands of trash-filled balloons southward since May, prompting Seoul to resume propaganda broadcasts along the frontier and suspend a 2018 deal aimed at lowering temperatures between the two militaries.
Declaring his "unification vision" Thursday at an event celebrating the country's liberation from Japanese rule, Yoon said: "As long as the state of division persists, our liberation will remain incomplete."
"The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation," he said, calling for the establishment of a new Inter-Korean Working Group.
The body "could take up any issue ranging from relieving tensions to economic cooperation, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and disaster and climate-change responses," Yoon said.
Yoon also underscored the "need to change the minds of the North Korean people to make them ardently desire a freedom-based unification".
"Even though the North Korean regime rejected our offer (to provide flood relief supplies) yet again, we will never stop making offers of humanitarian aid," Yoon said.
North Korea to reopen
for foreign tourists
after five years
SAMJIYON, Aug 15 (BBC): North Korea will reopen one city to foreign tourists in December after nearly five years of border closures due to the Covid pandemic, according to tour operators.
At least two China-based operators announced that tourists will soon be allowed to visit the mountainous northern city of Samjiyon.
Reclusive North Korea sealed itself off at the start of the pandemic in early 2020, and started to scale back restrictions only in the middle of last year.
The border closures also cut off imports of essential goods, leading to food shortages that were made worse by international sanctions because of the country's nuclear programme.
