(2nd LD) Park urges N. Korea to come forward for talks with S. Korea

SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Yonhap) -- President Park Geun-hye urged North Korea on Tuesday to quickly come forward for talks with South Korea, just days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered conditional summit talks with her.

South Korea proposed in late December that the two rival Koreas hold ministerial talks in January to discuss such bilateral issues as the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

In his New Year's address last Thursday, the North's leader said he is willing to hold summit talks with Park, if proper conditions are met. Kim also said North Korea could resume high-level talks and other forms of governmental dialogue with South Korea.

Still, North Korea has yet to reply to South Korea's recent offer to hold talks this month.

Park called on North Korea to demonstrate its commitment to improving ties with South Korea by actions.

"North Korea should quickly come forward for inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation and substantially handle with us specific projects for the establishment of peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula," Park said in a Cabinet meeting.

President Park Geun-hye smiles as she presides over a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office on Jan. 6, 2014. (Yonhap)

Still, questions linger over whether the two Koreas could hold any sincere talks as Kim threatened in last week's message that North Korea will "sternly react" to any provocation and military drills in apparent reference to anti-Pyongyang leaflets and South Korea's annual joint military drills with the U.S.

The two Koreas had agreed to hold high-level contact between late October and early November during a surprise visit to South Korea by a high-powered North Korean delegation.

But the North later backtracked on the deal in protest of the leaflets that North Korean defectors in South Korea regularly send to their homeland to try to encourage North Koreans to rise up against Kim.

The North has also repeatedly urged South Korea to scrap its annual military exercises with the U.S., viewing them as a rehearsal for a nuclear war against it.

South Korea has said it has no plan to make a change with regard to the schedule of its joint defense drills with the U.S. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said such exercises are purely defensive in nature.

The unification ministry also pressed Pyongyang once again to accept Seoul's overture.

"Should North Korea have a genuine will for improving South-North relations, it will have to show that through action by responding positively to our dialogue offer," the ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs said in a statement.

It stressed the importance of resolving the issue of families living on the other side of the heavily-fortified border due to the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two sides should start with a resolution to the problem of separated families and deal with various other issues in stages, it said.

The South's conservative administration hopes for an early resumption of family reunion events.

The ministry said time is running out to handle the matter, adding that more than 3,000 related family members died last year alone.

(END)