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South Korean President Moon Jae-in salutes the national flag ahead of a cabinet meeting Tuesday. (Yonhap News)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on the third anniversary of the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration on Tuesday that the “time for putting an end to all the deliberation and restarting dialogue is now at hand.”

His remarks came while he was presiding over a cabinet meeting at the Blue House that day.

“It’s time to prepare to start the clock of peace turning again based on the lessons we’ve learned through all these difficulties,” he continued.

Moon, scheduled to visit the US next month for a summit with President Joe Biden, also said he looked forward to that meeting as an “opportunity to make the South Korea-US alliance even more robust while coordinating closely on North Korea policy and establishing a course for moving forward in a progressive way.”

“This administration will be seeking out ways of achieving progress with the Korean Peninsula peace process based on solid cooperation with the Biden administration,” he added.

Recalling the inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom three years ago, Moon shared his feelings of disappointment over the current impasses in inter-Korean and North Korea-US relations.

“I can still see the scenery from the pedestrian bridge,” he said, referring to the Panmunjom bridge where he went for a walk and shared a conversation with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the time.

“It’s very dismaying to see how the deadlock has persisted ever since the collapse of the Hanoi summit [between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump in February 2019],” he continued.

He went on to stress the need to “proceed toward permanent peace on the foundation of the Panmunjom Declaration.”

“The peace right now is incomplete. We must move forward to irreversible, permanent peace based on the Panmunjom Declaration,” he said, emphasizing the need to carry on the significance of the declaration on April 27, 2018.

By Lee Wan, staff reporter

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