South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula cannot be abandoned, but also that he did not want the immediate reunification of North and South Korea.
"The denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula the two Koreas agreed upon jointly (in the past) is our basic stance that will never be given up," Moon said in an address during his New Year's news conference Wednesday.
North and South Korea agreed at their first formal talks in more than two years on Tuesday to resolve all inter-Korean matters through dialogue and to revive military talks to avert accidental conflict. Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula over the North's missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
(Reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL; Editing by Paul Tait)