"Regarding the end-of-war declaration, South Korea and the US have already shared the understanding on its importance, and the two sides have effectively reached an agreement on its draft text", Chung Eui-yong said at a press conference, as cited by Yonhap.
This is the first time Seoul has mentioned clear progress on elaborating the declaration.
The minister mentioned that the government is considering different approaches to achieve progress in negotiations with North Korea but has yet to share the declaration's draft text with North Korea and receive any response from Pyongyang via China's diplomatic pipelines.
In November 2021, the minister said that South Korea and the US had agreed on the Korean War Declaration's general outline. He mentioned that the two had a shared stance regarding the need to declare an end to the war as "the first step to return North Korea to a dialogue".
Missiles are taken on trucks past a stand with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, in Pyongyang October 10, 2015
© REUTERS / James Pearson
At the end of September, South Korean President Moon Jae-in addressed a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly and proposed to declare the end of the war on the Korean Peninsula in the presence of the US and China as it would help to achieve denuclearisation in the region. The same month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un accused the South of sticking to biased and unfair "double standards" in its policy and failure to put words into action.
The Korean Peninsula is still formally in a state of war since the parties to the conflict signed an armistice, not a peace treaty. It was signed by the commanders of North Korea and China on one side, and the US under the United Nations on the other. North Korea has since made several proposals to sign a peace treaty, all of them were rejected by the US.