N Korea ready for conditional dialog with South
North Korea says it is ready to begin talks with South Korea again, but only if Seoul scarps military maneuvers with the United States.
"There is no reason to avoid dialogue and negotiations if an atmosphere for trust and reconciliation is created," Pyongyang said in a statement via its official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea also demanded that South should take "bold" steps to remove challenges that continue to slow down dialogue.
According to Pyongyang, the biggest obstacle to potential peace talks is the South's joint military drills with the United States.
The North feels that the South must scrap the war games and stop slandering its government, added the Korean Central News Agency.
The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.
In the year 2000, then South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-Il agreed in a landmark summit on reconciliation and cooperation between the two countries.
However, both sides have since then traded allegations of insincerity.
Every year, South Korean and US soldiers perform massive military exercises right across the border from North Korea, an act that Pyongyang has repeatedly viewed as provocative.
This wasn’t the first time that North Korea pleaded with its southern neighbor to halt such military drills. Seoul has previously rejected the North's frequent calls to stop performing such drills with its key ally, the United States.
Tensions between the two countries remain high. Soul, for its part, blames the North for the tensions citing a series of North Korean ballistic missile tests as well as what it calls nuclear threats.
In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un proposed the "highest-level" talks with the South.
The last round of such high-level talks between Seoul and Pyongyang were held in February 2014.
The results of the negotiations saw for the first time in three years, the North hosting a reunion between separated families the same month.
HDS/NN/HRB
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