North Korea Offers Talks With South In A Likely Bid To Get Sanctions Relief

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/ [login to see] /north-korea-offers-talks-with-south-in-a-likely-bid-to-get-sanctions-relief
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Friday her country is willing to resume talks with South Korea if conditions are met, indicating it wants Seoul to persuade Washington to relax crippling economic sanctions.

Kim Yo Jong's statement came days after North Korea performed its first missile tests in six months, which some experts said were intended to show it would keep boosting its weapons arsenal if the U.S.-led sanctions stayed while nuclear diplomacy remains dormant.

She offered the talks while mentioning South Korean President Moon Jae-in's call, issued in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, for a political declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War as a way to bring peace to the peninsula.

"Smiling a forced smile, reading the declaration of the termination of the war, and having photos taken could be essential for somebody, but I think that they would hold no water and would change nothing, given the existing inequality, serious contradiction therefrom and hostilities," Kim Yo Jong said in the statement carried by state media.