Moon vows fresh push for peace in final months as president

SEOUL • South Korea's Moon Jae-in vowed to make another push for peace in his final months as president, despite fresh signs that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has little interest in reciprocating.

Mr Moon used his last New Year address as South Korea's leader to press for a cause that has defined his political career.

The former democracy campaigner and son of wartime refugees from North Korea is slated to leave office in May having made little progress in the peace process since signing a pair of landmark agreements with Mr Kim in 2018.

"All Koreans have long aspired to peace, prosperity and unification," Mr Moon said. "I will continue to make efforts to institutionalise sustainable peace, and I won't stop that until the end of my term."

He added: "We are a divided country and we have been through war. There is nothing more precious than peace to us."

Mr Moon saw his role as an intermediary between Washington and Pyongyang diminish after he helped broker the first summit between Mr Kim and then President Donald Trump more than three years ago in Singapore.

The South Korean President has long advocated an end-of-war declaration as a way to ease North Korean suspicions that America's goal is to remove Mr Kim from power.

Mr Trump rejected Mr Kim's demands to lift sanctions and walked away from their second summit in Hanoi in February 2019.

Pyongyang, in turn, has rebuffed Mr Moon's attempts at rapprochement, labelled him meddlesome, and in June last year destroyed the US$15 million (S$20.2 million) inter-Korean liaison office that had been the most visible symbol of Mr Moon's quest for warmer ties.

Mr Kim offered no clear overtures to Mr Moon or US President Joe Biden during a Workers' Party meeting in Pyongyang last week, according a dispatch on Saturday from the official Korean Central News Agency.

"It is true that we still have a long way to go," Mr Moon said, arguing that, "if we talk again and cooperate, the international community will also respond. Our government, if given the opportunity, will seek a path for the normalisation of inter-Korean relations and the irreversible peace."

Mr Moon said he hoped to see the country's next leader and would continue to seek talks.

While ruling party candidate Lee Jae-myung has endorsed Mr Moon's rapprochement efforts, opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, a former chief prosecutor under Mr Moon, has advocated a tougher line on Pyongyang.

Mr Moon has repeatedly argued that officially declaring an end to the 1950-53 conflict is the first step towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

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