North Korea Rejects New South Korean Leader's Peace Overtures
Since taking office on June 4, President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea has repeatedly said that he wanted to ease tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula by improving ties that deteriorated under his conservative predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol.
As gestures of good will, Mr. Lee banned anti-North Korean activists from sending leaflets into the North by balloon. He also stopped the loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border that had long angered Pyongyang. Earlier this month, South Korea even switched off shortwave radio broadcasts that had carried similar propaganda for over a half century.
But such efforts by Mr. Lee were 'not the work worthy of appreciation,' said Kim Yo-jong, who speaks for her brother, Kim Jong-un, the top leader of North Korea, in a statement carried in North Korean state media on Monday.
'No matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither the reason to meet nor the issue to be discussed with the ROK,' Ms. Kim said, using the acronym for the South's official name, Republic of Korea.
She cited the South Korean government's ongoing alliance with the United States and the countries' plans to continue holding annual joint military drills as evidence of little change under the new administration.
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