Seoul: North Korea leader Kim Jong Un expressed willingness to restore stalled communication lines with South Korea in coming days while shrugging off U.S. offers for dialogue as cunning ways to conceal its hostility against the North, state media reported Thursday. Kim's statement is an apparent effort to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington as he wants South Korea to help him win relief from crippling U.S.-led economic sanctions and other concessions. Pyongyang this month has offered conditional talks with Seoul alongside its first missile firings in six months and stepped-up criticism of the United States.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency closed meeting on Thursday at the request of the United States, the U.K. and France on North Korea's recent tests.
During a speech at his country's rubber-stamp parliament on Wednesday, Kim said the restoration in early October of cross-border hotlines which have been largely dormant for more than a year would realize the Korean people's wishes for a peace between the two Koreas, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Kim still accused South Korea of being bent on begging external support and cooperation while clamoring for international cooperation in servitude to the U.S., rather than committing to resolving the matters independently between the Koreas.
Kim echoed his powerful sister Kim Yo Jong's calls for Seoul to abandon double-dealing attitude and hostile viewpoint over the North's missile tests and other developments. Some experts say North Korea is pressuring South Korea to tone down its criticism of its ballistic missile tests, which are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions, as part of its quest to receive an international recognition as a nuclear power. South Korea's Unification Ministry responded that it'll prepare for the restoration of the hotlines that it said is needed to discuss and resolve many pending issues. It said it expects them to operate smoothly because their restoration was directly instructed by Kim Jong Un. On the United States, Kim Jong Un dismissed repeated U.S. offers to resume talks without preconditions, calling them an attempt to hide America's hostile policy and military threats that he said remain unchanged.