The South Korean Moon has promised the North to push for peace Moon Jae-in News

Ensuring peace with the North has been the main goal of the Moon’s mandate, which will end in May.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has promised to use his last months to push for diplomatic progress with North Korea, despite Pyongyang’s silence on efforts to secure a declaration of peace between the two countries.

“I will not stop the efforts to institutionalize it [a] lasting peace, ”Moon said in his last New Year’s speech on Monday, before the end of his five-year term in May.

“The government will continue the normalization of relations between Korea and the irreversible path to peace until the end. I hope that the next administration will continue its efforts for dialogue.”

In his speech on New Year’s Eve, the North Korean leader Focused on Kim Jong Un stimulating the economy and improving people’s lives. Marking 10 years in power, did not mention Moon’s calls for a declaration that the 1950-53 Korean War was officially ending, or that he had stopped denuclearization talks with the United States.

Moon made several peaks with Kim, including Pyongyang, a a bunch of negotiations In 2018 and 2019, however, the process was distorted by disagreements over international demands for the North to abandon its nuclear weapons arsenal, and Pyongyang called for Washington and Seoul to ease sanctions and suspend other “political enemies”.

The moon is pushing oneend-of-war declaration”As a way to stimulate stagnant dialogue and his administration has suggested backchannel discussions.

But North Korea has not publicly responded to the latest push, and the U.S. has said it supports the idea but may disagree with the South about its timing.

“It is true that there is still a long way to go,” Moon acknowledged, but argued that if the two Koreas improved their relations, the international community would continue.

Moon said reaching for North Korea was made possible by a large military force that helped make the South safer.

“Peace is possible with strong security,” he said.

Moon also spoke about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in his speech, thanking the country’s health workers and offering condolences to the dead and their families.

The President said that “2022 will become the first year of normalization, fully recovering from the crisis”, although he was pleased to note the emergence of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

The number of daily cases in South Korea rose to nearly 8,000 last month, but stricter rules on social distance and other public health initiatives have slowed the spread.

The North imposed strict border closures in the early 2020s of the pandemic, and says it has had no case of the virus.