South Korea Offers North Talks on Cooperation, Peace

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol offered to establish a working-level consultative body with North Korea to discuss ways to ease tension and resume economic cooperation, as he laid out his vision on unification of the neighbors.

In a National Liberation Day speech marking the 79th anniversary of independence from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule after World War Two, Yoon said he was ready to begin political and economic cooperation if North Korea "takes just one step" toward denuclearisation.

Yoon used the speech as a chance to unveil a blueprint for unification and make a fresh outreach to Pyongyang, following his government's recent offer to provide relief supplies for flood damage in the isolated North which he said had been rejected.

Yoon said launching the "inter-Korean working group" could help relieve tensions and handle any issues ranging from economic cooperation to people-to-people exchanges to reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

"We will begin political and economic cooperation the moment North Korea takes just one step toward denuclearisation," he said at a ceremony in Seoul.

"Dialogue and cooperation can bring about substantive progress in inter-Korean relations."

The speech came amid a dispute with opposition lawmakers over Yoon's appointment of what they view as a pro-Japan, revisionist former professor to oversee a national independence museum, another sign of political polarization and divided opinions over Yoon's efforts to ramp up security ties with Tokyo.

Major independence movement groups which had for decades co-hosted the annual National Liberation Day events with the government held a separate ceremony for the first time in protest over the professor, joined by opposition lawmakers.