Now is the time requiring responsibility for the north and the south to pool efforts and wisdom and write a new history of inter-Korean relations by boldly sloughing off a narrow-minded stand of distrust and confrontation, the article notes, and goes on:

Being aware of the unanimous desire of all Koreans and requirements of the times and history, the north and the south should sincerely work for mending the relations.

The Koreans, though they are a homogeneous nation, have lived, separated from each other like outsiders. This is attributable to the moves of foreign aggressors to divide them and sow discord among them.

No matter how deep the distrust and misunderstanding pent up between the north and the south in the course of long confrontation between them may be, they can be surely removed if they maintain the viewpoint and stand that they should be reunified as one and the same nation.

The ties between the north and the south should be those between compatriots, those based on the spirit of By Our Nation Itself as they should advance hand in hand towards peace and national reunification.

If foreign forces are allowed to interfere in the issue of the inter-Korean relations, the present bedeviled inter-Korean relations can never improve.

If the south sticks to its confrontation policy, reading foreign forces' faces and cooperating with them even at present when the improvement of the inter-Korean relations presents itself as an urgent issue, this will do serious harm to the nation.

The DPRK remains unchanged in its stand to radically repair the north-south relations and achieve the independent reunification, peace and prosperity through dialogue and negotiations in the spirit of By Our Nation Itself.