S. Korea aims to have over 1 mln eco-friendly cars by 2020

North Korea's nuclear issue should be among agenda items for the dialogue between the two Koreas, the South Korean presidential advisory panel on unification said Tuesday.

South Korea needs to actively push for the resumption of the long-stalled six-party denuclearization talks and the North's nuke issue should be high on the agenda for inter-Korean talks, the National Unification Advisory Council said in its regular policy proposal report.

The six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia have been stalled since 2008 as the North has refused to give up its nuclear arsenal. The North has conducted three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

It also stressed that all kinds of ballistic missile launches by North Korea, including submarine-based ones, should be regarded as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning nuke and missile tests.

The report's release falls just days before the two Koreas are scheduled to hold a rare vice-ministerial meeting at a joint industrial park in the North's border city of Kaesong on Friday.

The agenda for the upcoming talks has not been confirmed yet, but the South is widely expected to place a priority on families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, calling for regular reunions of such families.

North Korea is likely to call on the South to resume a joint tour program at Mount Kumgang, which has been suspended since 2008 following the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist.

An official at the Unification Ministry said that the advisory panel's proposal is not necessarily associated with the upcoming inter-Korean dialogue as it releases such reports on a quarterly basis.

The report also said that North Korea may be "flexible" in handling inter-Korean talks and its nuclear issue to show off the achievements of the North's leader Kim Jong-un ahead of a party event next year.

The North's Workers' Party plans to hold the first congress in more than three decades in early May where Kim is likely to unveil new lines of policy and conduct reshuffles.

"But the possibility of North Korea's fourth nuke test or provocation cannot be excluded if Pyongyang judges that it cannot accept requests by South Korea and the global community to change," the report said. (Yonhap)