PYONGYAN, 25 September 2021, (TON): The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said “her country is willing to resume talks with South Korea if it doesn’t provoke the North with hostile policies and double standards.”

Kim Yo Jong’s statement was a response to South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s renewed calls for a declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War as a way to bring back peace.

Her proposal also came days after North Korea performed its first missile tests in six months and South Korea performed its first test of a submarine-launched missile.

Kim Yo Jong said “If South Korea distances itself from the past when it provoked us and criticised us at every step with its double standards and restores sincerity in its words and actions and abandons its hostility, we would then be willing to resume close communication and engage in constructive discussions about restoring and developing relations.”

To achieve the end-of-the war declaration, she said “we must ensure mutual respect toward one another and abandon prejudiced views, harshly hostile policies and unfair double standards toward the other side first.”

Her comments were a contrast to a blunt statement by a senior North Korean diplomat earlier on Friday that the end-of-war declaration could be used as a “smokescreen covering up the US hostile policy” against the North.