Senior officials from Pyongyang visiting
South Korea on Sunday said North Korea was open to talks with the United
States, hours after it accused Washington of trying to stir up conflict
on the peninsula with new sanctions.
In Pyeongchang for the
closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the visiting delegation also
said developments in relations between the two Koreas and between North
Korea and the United States should go hand in hand, the South's
presidency said in a statement.
The delegation met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at an undisclosed location in the Olympic city.
Earlier
a statement released by North Korean state media accused the United
States of provoking confrontation on the Korean peninsula with Friday's
sanctions announcement.
Sunday's closing ceremony was attended by
Moon, the North Korean delegation, and U.S. President Donald Trump's
daughter, Ivanka Trump, among other dignitaries.
The Olympics
have given a boost to engagement between the two Koreas after more than a
year of sharply rising tension over the North's missile tests and its
sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
But
the closing days of the Games were overshadowed by the U.S.
announcement that it was imposing its largest package of sanctions aimed
at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programmes.
"Thanks
to our supreme leadership's noble love for the nation and strong
determination for peace, long-awaited inter-Korean dialogue and
cooperation have been realized and the Olympics took place successfully
by the inter-Korean collaboration," the North's KCNA state news agency
said, citing North Korea's ministry of foreign affairs.
"On the
eve of closing of the Olympics, United States is running amok to bring
another dark cloud of confrontation and war over the Korean peninsula by
announcing enormous sanctions against the DPRK," it said, using the
initials of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea.
Earlier, about 100 conservative South Korean lawmakers
and activists staged a sit-in near the border with North Korea, facing
off against about 2,500 South Korean police to protest against the
arrival of a northern delegation led by Kim Yong Chol, an official
accused of being behind a deadly 2010 attack on a South Korean warship.
The
delegation took a different route, prompting the opposition Korea
Liberty Party to accuse President Moon Jae-in's administration of "abuse
of power and an act of treason" by re-routing the motorcade to shield
it from the protest.
Moon met Kim in Pyeongchang, where the
Olympics are being held, before the closing ceremony, the South Korean
government said in a statement.
The North's decision to send
former military intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol as delegation leader to
the closing ceremony has enraged families of 46 sailors killed in the
torpedo attack on their ship and threatens the mood of rapprochement
that Seoul wants to create at what it calls the "Peace Games".
North Korea has denied its involvement in the sinking.
Trump warning
For the opening ceremony, the North sent Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
She
was the centre of a frenzy of attention, especially when she appeared
at the opening ceremony and stood only a few feet from U.S. Vice
President Mike Pence. They did not speak together.
Kim Yo Jong
and the North's nominal head of state were the most senior North Korean
officials to visit the South in more than a decade. The North Korean
leader later said he wanted to boost a "warm climate of reconciliation
and dialogue".
U.S. President Donald Trump, in announcing the new
sanctions on Friday, warned of a "phase two" that could be "very, very
unfortunate for the world" if the sanctions did not work.
North
Korea denounced the sanctions in a statement carried on its state media
and said a blockade by the United States would be considered an act of
war.
China also reacted angrily to the new U.S. measures, saying
on Saturday the unilateral targeting of Chinese firms and people risked
harming cooperation on North Korea.
Trump's daughter, Ivanka
Trump, a senior White House adviser, met Moon on Friday as part of a
weekend trip to lead the U.S. delegation to the closing ceremony of the
Winter Olympics, but no official meeting between the American and North
Korean delegations was planned.
Moon won election last year promising to try to improve relations with the North