N. Korea calls for US to stop hostile policy

By Choi Sung-jin

North Korea sent an open letter to the United States Friday, calling for Washington to cease its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and stop the annual U.S.-South Korea joint military drills.

“The participants in the joint conference of the DPRK (North Korea’s official name), its political parties and organizations sent an open letter to the United States of America on Friday,” said the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in an English dispatch monitored in Seoul.

“The U.S. is blocking the historical flow toward peace and unification with unreasonable assertions and hostile behavior,” stated the open letter.

Calling for Washington to make a bold political decision of repealing its anti-North Korea policy, the letter continued, “The U.S. would be well advised to choose a new way of thinking and opt for a new practice, away from the old framework of its anachronistic hostile policy toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has shackled its thinking and practices for a long time.”

Pyongyang also urged the U.S. to stop all military exercises with Seoul on the Korean Peninsula, citing these as the root causes of escalating tensions.

“The U.S. should offer a solution in dealing with those which have nuclear weapons,” it said. “America ought to accept frankly our rightful initiatives and proposals for peace.”

Amid the tightened international sanctions on North Korea in the aftermath of its nuclear and missile provocations, Pyongyang has also made a series of dialogue proposals to Seoul, which flatly rejected them as political offensives.