DHAKA: South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye has said she is prepared to hold talks with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un without setting pre-conditions.

In a nationally televised press conference, she said she would ‘meet with anyone if necessary to open the path of a peaceful unification’.

Kim offered talks if the conditions were right in his new year message.

Leaders of the two countries have only met twice, in 2000 and 2007, since the Korean War which divided the peninsula.

Kim had said on 1 January that ‘depending on the mood and circumstances’, there would be ‘no reason’ not to hold a high-level summit on the reunification of the two Koreas.

On Monday, Park delivered her own new year message saying she would set no conditions to the talks, but added that North Korea should take ‘sincere’ steps towards denuclearisation, reports the BBC.

BDST: 1507 HRS, JAN 12, 2015