SEOUL • South Korea's call for a formal end to the Korean War is premature but the door for dialogue is open if it scraps its double standards and hostile policy, a senior North Korean official said in comments published by state media yesterday.

The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice but not a peace treaty, leaving US-led United Nations forces technically still at war with North Korea. The question of formally ending the war has become caught up in a US-led effort to get North Korea to give up it nuclear weapons.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in repeated a call for a formal end to the war in an address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Senior North Korean official Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said Mr Moon's proposal was "interesting and admirable" but conditions were not right because of South Korea's persistent double standards, prejudice and hostility.

"Under such a situation, it does not make any sense to declare the end of the war with all the things - which may become a seed of a war between parties that have been at odds for more than half a century - left intact," Ms Kim said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.

South Korea should change its attitude and foster the conditions for a meaningful discussion on ways to end the conflict and improve ties, she said.

"What needs to be dropped is the double-dealing attitudes, illogical prejudice, bad habits and hostile stand of justifying their own acts while faulting our just exercise of the right to self-defence," Ms Kim said. "Only when such a precondition is met, would it be possible to sit face to face and declare the significant termination of war and discuss the issue of the north-south relations and the future of the Korean peninsula."

North Korea has for decades been seeking an end to the war but the United States has been reluctant to agree unless Pyongyang gave up its nuclear weapons. Expectations were raised that a declaration on ending the war, even if not an actual treaty, would be made during a historic summit between then US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Mr Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018.

But that possibility, and the momentum on talks that those two leaders generated over three meetings, came to nothing. Talks have been stalled since 2019.

Mr Moon, a liberal who has made improving ties with North Korea a priority, sees ending the war as a way to nudge forward the effort to press Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals in return for US sanctions relief. But his call looks unlikely to break the deadlock.

REUTERS