North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae In have exchanged personal letters, the North's official media reported Friday, despite rising tensions over Pyongyang's military provocations.
Kim and Moon shared the view that inter-Korean relations "would improve and develop" if the North and South "make tireless efforts with hope," the Korean Central News Agency said.
In Seoul, Moon's spokeswoman, Park Kyung Mee, said that in his letter to Kim, Moon said, "Holding the hands of Chairman Kim, I took one clear step that would change the fate of the Korean Peninsula."
The exchange between the two leaders came just days after South Korea and its defense ally, the United States, began joint springtime military exercises, which the North slammed as a "rehearsal" for war.
By improving ties with Seoul during Moon's remaining tenure, Pyongyang might be trying to urge South Korea's conservative President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol to abide by joint declarations previously signed by Kim and Moon, pundits said. Yoon will take office on May 10.
KCNA said Kim received a personal letter from Moon on Wednesday and replied to him the following day, adding the exchange of letters between the two leaders is "an expression of their deep trust."
"Kim Jong Un appreciated the pains and effort taken by Moon Jae In for the great cause of the nation until the last days of his term of office," the news agency said.
Park said at a news briefing that in his letter, Kim expressed regret for not being able to achieve as much as the two leaders had hoped.
For his part, the South Korean president asked the North Korean leader to resume talks with the United States in the near future and to proceed with dialogue with the incoming Yoon administration, the spokeswoman said.
Kim and Moon met three times during a period of rapprochement in the divided Korean Peninsula beginning in 2018. In the joint declaration they signed at their summit meeting in Pyongyang in September of that year, the two leaders agreed to take steps to cool military tensions and improve bilateral ties.
But in recent years, inter-Korean relations have sharply deteriorated, as U.S.-North Korea negotiations over denuclearization and sanctions relief stalled for more than two years.
Kim is believed to be irritated that Moon hesitated to move forward on economic cooperation projects with Pyongyang, including reviving operations at the Kaesong industrial park, near the border with the South, amid opposition from Washington.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, North Korea's economy has been sluggish as it sealed its borders to keep the novel coronavirus out, choking off its trade with China -- Pyongyang's most influential ally in economic terms.
Although Kim is apparently eager to see the United States ease its crushing economic sanctions against his country, Pyongyang has returned to the very missile activities that had previously prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions resolutions against it.
North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile last month, marking an end to its self-imposed moratorium on ICBM tests introduced in April 2018.
And on Sunday, KCNA reported that Kim observed the test-firing of a "new-type tactical guided weapon" the previous day. Some analysts say it can carry a tactical nuclear weapon that could be used in a limited-strike capacity.
Speculation lingers that, in the not-so-distant future, North Korea may stage its seventh nuclear test or test-fire an ICBM capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in the continental United States.
The United States and North Korea remain technically in a state of war as the 1950-1953 Korean War, in which U.S.-led U.N. forces fought alongside South Korea against the North supported by China and the Soviet Union, ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The last time that Kim and Moon exchanged letters was in July 2021, when the two Koreas agreed to reconnect their communications lines that the North had cut off the previous year.
In June 2020, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, a symbol of recent inter-Korean reconciliation, in retaliation for defectors in South Korea launching balloons carrying leaflets critical of the North.
