S Korea to seek peace treaty with N Korea

South Korea's new government will seek to sign a peace treaty with the North if it abandons its nuclear weapons, a minister said yesterday.

Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-Sung's comments came hours before South Korea's new leader Moon Jae-In -- who backs engagement with Pyongyang -- was set to hold his first summit with US President Donald Trump, with the North's growing nuclear and missile threats casting a long shadow.

The two Koreas are still technically at war because a peace treaty was never agreed to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the conflict on the peninsula.

The US -- the South's security guarantor -- has 28,500 troops stationed in the country to protect it from its neighbour, and a treaty could entail their withdrawal, which has long been demanded by Pyongyang.

"We have to get over the current unstable system of armistice and put an end to the war on the Korean peninsula that has not yet ended," Chun said in a keynote speech at a seminar.

But a treaty could only be signed "at the stage of complete denuclearisation of the North", he added at the event organised by the Yonhap news agency.

The previous conservative governments of ousted president Park Geun-Hye and her predecessor Lee Myung-Bak shied away from referring to a peace treaty.