South Korea president proposes talks with North to formally end Korean War

NEW: South Korean President Lee Jae-myung proposes formal talks with North Korea to end the Korean War, urging both sides to 'put down our intentions to threaten each other.'

The Korean War has technically never ended, and South Korea's president wants to change that. Lee Jae-myung is proposing formal talks with the North to finally close out a conflict that stopped shooting in 1953 but never got a peace treaty.

Speaking today, Lee urged both sides to, in his words, put down our intentions to threaten each other. That's the whole pitch. Seventy three years of armistice, two armies still staring at each other across the DMZ, and a president saying let's actually finish this.

The man on the other side of that offer is Kim Jong Un, and history says he's a hard audience. Summits in 2018 and 2019 produced handshakes, photographs, and then years of missile tests and silence.

So the offer is on the table. The last time Pyongyang answered one like it, the world got a photo op and no peace. Whether this time is different depends entirely on whether Kim picks up the phone.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.

Source Read the original reporting at channelnewsasia.com