TOKYO (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Pyongyang urged Seoul to accept its offer to hold military talks and called for joint steps to carry out "practical" measures for national unity, citing the need to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula.
"Before offering military talks between the North and the South, one must effectively demonstrate a real turn toward denuclearization," the South Korean Defense Ministry said, as quoted by Yonhap News Agency.
Since 1953, Seoul and Pyongyang have been legally at war following the signing of an armistice, and not a peace treaty, at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Relations between the two nations fluctuate sporadically, in particular, after 2005, when North Korea declared itself a nuclear power, and conducted several nuclear weapon tests.
Their relations deteriorated significantly in January when Pyongyang successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test.
